ABSTRACT
Japanese manufacturing organizations have made a lot of inroads in overseas production bases. In order to understand the strategic management issues regarding Japanese overseas affiliates, this chapter discusses the essential characteristics of the Japanese system of management. The Japanese system of management is a complete philosophy of organization that can affect every part of the enterprise. Operational information is more frequent than strategic information about market plans, production plans, process development plans, and financial performance. Ford has introduced a Japanese system of a production-inventory system in collaboration with Mazda, another Japanese car market, in their UK plants. Nissan has created the in-house Imports Production Committee whose mission is to increase imports to Japan of both original equipment parts and after-market replacement parts from competitive suppliers. UK workers can go for training in Japan, the United States, and Canada, and the workers from Toyota’s foreign and Japanese establishments can come to the UK for training.
