This book explores how the business transformation taking place in Japan is influenced by the digital revolution. Its chapters present approaches and examples from sectors commonly understood to be visible arenas of digital transformation—3D printing and mobility, for instance—as well as some from not-so-obvious sectors, such as retail, services, and fintech. Business today is facing unprecedented change especially due to the adoption of new, digital technologies, with a noticeable transformation of manufacturing and services. The changes have been brought by advanced robotics, the emergence of artificial intelligence, and digital networks that are growing in size and capability as the number of connected devices explodes. In addition, there are advanced manufacturing and collaborative connected platforms, including machine-to-machine communications. Adoption of digital technology has caused process disruptions in both the manufacturing and services sectors and led to new business models and new products. While examining the preparedness of the Japanese economy to embrace these changes, the book explores the impact of digitally influenced changes on some selected sectors from a Japanese perspective. It paints a big picture in explaining how a previously manufacturing-centric, successful economy adopts change to retain and rebuild success in the global environment. Japan as a whole is embracing, yet also avoiding—innovating but also restricting—various forms of digitalization of life and work. The book, with its 17 chapters, is a collaborative effort of individuals contributing diverse points of view as technologists, academics, and managers.

This book looks at Japanese companies in manufacturing and services sectors and how they are trying to emerge from the prolonged uncertainty of the pandemic. The chapters are written by those dealing with Japanese business under the shadow of the pandemic and being influenced by the continuous and rapid adoption of digital technologies in business and our daily lives. This book brings together the experiences of big and small corporations while looking at how digital transformation and the pandemic combined have led to a transformation in the product, production processes and services. It highlights the role played by robots, 3-D printing and renewable energy in manufacturing while the impact can be seen in the changes coming to future offices, how we work and interact and how we relax through tourism and travel on the service side. The services sector is as much impacted by digital transformation and the pandemic as any other field in business. Aimed at academics, researchers and practitioners, Japanese Business Operations in an Uncertain World will provide valuable insights into how Japanese organizations are adapting to the dual impact of the pandemic and advancements in digital technologies.

This book explores how the business transformation taking place in Japan is influenced by the digital revolution. The chapters present approaches and examples from sectors commonly understood to be visible arenas of digital transformation—3D printing and mobility, for instance—as well as some from not-so-obvious sectors, such as retail, services, and fintech. Business today is facing unprecedented change especially due to the adoption of new, digital technologies, with a noticeable transformation of manufacturing and services. The changes have been brought by advanced robotics, the emergence of artificial intelligence, and digital networks that are growing in size and capability as the number of connected devices explodes. In addition, there are advanced manufacturing and collaborative connected platforms, including machine-to-machine communications. Adoption of digital technology has caused process disruptions in both the manufacturing and services sectors and led to new business models and new products. While examining the preparedness of the Japanese economy to embrace these changes, the book explores the impact of digitally influenced changes on some selected sectors from a Japanese perspective. It paints a big picture in explaining how a previously manufacturing-centric, successful economy adopts change to retain and rebuild success in the global environment. Japan as a whole is embracing, yet also avoiding—innovating but also restricting—various forms of digitalization of life and work. The book, with its 12 chapters, is a collaborative effort of individuals contributing diverse points of view as technologists, academics, and managers.

After two decades of reinvention, Japanese companies are re-emerging as major players in the new digital economy. They have responded to the rise of China and new global competition by moving upstream into critical deep-tech inputs and advanced materials and components. This new "aggregate niche strategy" has made Japan the technology anchor for many global supply chains. Although the end products do not carry a "Japan Inside" label, Japan plays a pivotal role in our everyday lives across many critical industries. This book is an in-depth exploration of current Japanese business strategies that make Japan the world's third-largest economy and an economic leader in Asia. To accomplish their reinvention, Japan's largest companies are building new processes of breakthrough innovation. Central to this book is how they are addressing the necessary changes in organizational design, internal management processes, employment, and corporate governance. Because Japan values social stability and economic equality, this reinvention is happening slowly and methodically, and has gone largely unnoticed by Western observers. Yet, Japan's more balanced model of "caring capitalism" is both competitive and transformative, and more socially responsible than the unbridled growth approach of the United States.

Over the last two decades, Japanese firms have challenged U.S. dominance in many manufacturing industries. This challenge has increasingly come in the form of transplant operations, and recognition has spread that their success owes a great deal to superior manufacturing management. Despite the ups and downs of the business cycle in Japan, there remains a core of world-class Japanese companies that have developed manufacturing management systems that companies throughout the world strive to emulate. In this edited volume, a team of eminent scholars uses case studies and large-scale surveys to explain in depth the process of transferring and transforming the best Japanese Management Systems (JMS) by both Japanese- and U.S.-owned firms. While the most successful of the Japanese manufacturing transplants rely, to varying degrees, on home country management techniques, they have had to adapt them to fit U.S. conditions. Similarly, the growing number of U.S. firms that are adopting these techniques to strengthen their own positions face a considerable challenge in transforming them to fit local conditions. A new environment necessarily compels the transformation of JMS. But despite the hurdles firms face, the evidence presented here and elsewhere strongly indicates that key aspects of JMS are remarkably transferable and successful in the United States. Combining scientific data with clear and engaging prose,Remade in America is a rich analytical resource for manufacturing professionals, as well as scholars and students of management and business.

The purpose of this book is to highlight how current successful Japanese multinational enterprises (MNEs) and companies have changed their business or business models in the past three decades. Japanese MNEs received a lot of attention from academia and industry during the 1980s and the early 1990s, and their factors for success have been compared with those of Western MNEs. Unfortunately, following the collapse of the “bubble economy” in the early 1990s, international business researchers and practitioners’ attention has turned away from Japan and its MNEs to emerging markets, notably the rapidly growing China. Japanese MNEs have faced the mature domestic economy and also have had to overcome many new challenges in the twenty-first century, such as rapid aging, depopulation, and response to new technologies. Japanese MNEs and companies today are being forced to respond to new business environments never seen in the past. The prerequisites for business activities have significantly changed from those of former Japanese companies and their management practices. Even in such a difficult situation, however, many Japanese MNEs and emerging companies have achieved steady growth and have succeeded by changing their business models. This book provides the reader with new directions for research and lessons by analyzing the challenges of Japanese multinational enterprises and emerging companies. The redirection of attention is expected to have a positive impact on the field of international business study and practice.