ABSTRACT
Manufacturing processes begin with product design engineering and progress to manufacturing engineering and production. Although manufacturing engineers take charge of manufacturing engineering processes, the roles played by manufacturing engineers are little known. Chapter 1, “Introduction,” presents the overarching main purpose and four specific purposes of this book. The main purpose is to clarify the roles and human resource management practices of manufacturing engineers at Japanese firms. The four specific purposes are to reveal the characteristics and importance of the roles of Japanese manufacturing engineers; to analyze differences in the roles of Japanese manufacturing engineers across manufacturing sectors, industries, and firms; to compare the roles of Japanese manufacturing engineers with the roles of German, French, and American manufacturing engineers; and to examine the human resource management practices and industrial relations of Japanese manufacturing engineers and to compare them with the human resource management practices and industrial relations of German, French, and American manufacturing engineers. This chapter also gives an overview of the current state of manufacturing industries in the United States and Japan, reviews previous research concerning employees at American and Japanese manufacturing firms, introduces the research framework, and presents the plan of this book.
