ABSTRACT
Isuzu Motors, Ltd. traces its origins back to 1916, when the Tokyo Ishikawajima Shipbuilding and Engineering Co., Ltd., began to manufacture automobiles. Isuzu's market share in heavy- and light-duty trucks was over 10%, making it the fourth largest in the domestic Japanese market. Its major competitors were Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Nissan, with market shares of 24%, 14%, and 11%. Isuzu's cost-down program consisted of five major steps: developing functional specifications, value engineering, teardown, detailed cost reduction, and some cost-reduction-related techniques, such as the Isuzu Production System and design for manufacturability. Isuzu developed a sophisticated approach to cost creation that relied heavily on a cost deployment flowchart. The cost deployment flowchart was developed to ensure that cost-reduction activities were applied to a product as early as possible in its development. The flowchart identified five development stages in a vehicle's design: the concept proposal stage, the planning stage, the development and product-preparation stage, the development and production-preparation stage, and the production-preparation stage.
