ABSTRACT
Yokohama Corporation, Ltd., was created as a joint venture between a Japanese automobile manufacturer and the Japanese government. Yokohama was founded in July 1939 and began production in late 1942. Yokohama's major automotive customers included Tokyo Motors, Hino, Mazda, and Toyota. Many customers, such as Tokyo Motors, multi-sourced products, typically buying from at least two different suppliers. The target costing systems were coupled to strong supplier-customer relationships that often spread over several layers of the parts supply chain. At the heart of Yokohama's survival was the ability to manufacture products at low cost. To help it achieve this objective, the firm had developed an integrated set of cost-reduction programs, the most important of which were the Yokohama Production System and value engineering programs. These two programs were designed to operate together to make all aspects of the production system more efficient.
