Archive for the ‘Japan: Competing on Operational Effectiveness’ Category

Background to the issues facing Japan: Competing on operational effectiveness

How can Japan’s apparent competitive success on the one hand be reconciled with its low profitability, limited array of competitive industries, and inability to sustain competitiveness on the other? The answer seems to lie in making the distinction between approaches to competition.

In the 1970s and 80s, the Japanese set the world standard for operational effectiveness – that is, for improving quality and lowering cost in ways that were widely applicable to many fields. Japanese companies taught the world an array of approaches, such as total quality management, just-in-time inventory management, lean production, and cycle time reduction that improve productivity in nearly every company in every industry (Furstenburg, 1974).

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