Michiya Morita

The linkage among management systems, practices and behaviour in successful manufacturing strategy

Examines the role and influence of management systems, practices and behaviour in successful manufacturing strategy, based on the development of manufacturing strategy into a comprehensive concept which contains three paradigms: manufacturing as a source of competitive advantage, that the choices of manufacturing processes and other related characteristics are contingent on one another, and there is a relationship between best practice and performance. The study employed a survey of 46 Japanese factories in the machinery, electronics and automotive industries, with 26 people in each factory. The factories were examined on how closely they used “best practices” management. In addition, factor analysis, cluster analysis, t‐tests on differences between the groups and correlations among clusters, practices and performance were conducted. The results supported the study’s three hypotheses: factories report different levels of use of the best practices; best practices are linked into certain sets of practices; and the use of best practices is related to performance. The discussion and conclusions address these findings and are used to offer support for Voss’s recent claim that manufacturing strategy should be considered “a continuous loop” among the three paradigms of manufacturing strategy.

Managing global supply chain relationships : operations, strategies and practices

This book focuses on issues related to relationships among members of global supply chains, addressesing three important aspects of global supply chain relationships - supply chain integration and collaboration, outsourcing and offshoring of production, and recent growth in supplier networks--Provided by publisher.

Visually Do Statistics for Business Persons: Visual Materials from Regression to Black-Sholes Model

Visualization has the power to make people understand the content meaning at a glance and visualization is required also in mathematics education. We have developed and used visual teaching materials for our university statistics lectures. In the paper, we present visual materials in various fields from regression to Black-Sholes model.

A product development process for linked management: application cases of electrical home appliance products

The effective linkage between necessary functions is critically important to implement a business strategy and achieve satisfactory performances. The linkage covers the essential activities from upstream actions (technology and product development) to downstream ones (procurement, manufacturing and selling). We propose that the construction of the effective linkage starts with the process of product development and requires the consistent effort to systematise the process based on the case study of the home appliance division of a Japanese electrical appliance manufacturing company. The case would be suggestive to many large Japanese companies not-least part of which business consists of the matured products facing severe competition.

Visually Do Statistics: Visual Materials of Covariance in Regressive Analysis

Visualization has the power to make people understand the content meaning at a glance and visualization is required also in mathematics education. We have developed and used visual teaching materials for our university statistics lectures. In the paper, we present visual materials to explain the variance and covariance, and the regression because many people use regressive analysis.