An account of the Japanese automobile industry, which focuses on its business success as a relative latecomer to the worldwide market. It profiles the leading producers, such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi, and highlights the features of their success in management and design.

Five years after the publication of MITs lean production book practitioners and academics from Japan, USA and Europe present new concepts, findings and conclusions in regard to one of the most critical areas of automobile production. The focus of the book is to explore automation and work organization for the final assembly operations in the world automobile industry. The authors are company practitioners in charge of planning assembly operations and academic researchers drawing from recent empirical work. Thus, the book presents a multi-facetted view on a development of critical importance for future development of the industry. The book is rich with figures, fotos, tables, thus making the text vivid, easy to understand and illustrative.

The Japanese automotive industry enjoyed spectacular success in the 1980s. This was largely due to the so-called 'Lean Production System' - the combination of an efficient production system, an effective supplier system, and a product development system. In the 1990s the industry fell on hard times because of the Japanese asset price bubble and extreme currency appreciation. In this book, eminent industry specialist Koichi Shimokawa draws on his thirty years of research and fieldwork with Japanese and American firms, to show how the Japanese automotive industry has managed to recover from this difficult period. He shows how firms like Toyota were able to transfer Japanese systems to overseas plants and how they have changed in order to compete in increasingly globalized markets. In addition, the book also addresses the two major challenges to the current industry model: the rise of China and the environmental and energy supply situation.

The Japanese automotive industry enjoyed spectacular success in the 1980s. This was largely due to the so-called 'Lean Production System' - the combination of an efficient production system, an effective supplier system, and a product development system. In the 1990s the industry fell on hard times because of the Japanese asset price bubble and extreme currency appreciation. In this 2010 book, eminent industry specialist Koichi Shimokawa draws on his thirty years of research and fieldwork with Japanese and American firms, to show how the Japanese automotive industry has managed to recover from this difficult period. He shows how firms like Toyota were able to transfer Japanese systems to overseas plants and how they have changed in order to compete in increasingly globalized markets. In addition, the book also addresses the two major challenges to the current industry model: the rise of China and the environmental and energy supply situation.