Abstract
The Japanese automotive industry showed an excellent performance in product development, resulting from such corporate abilities as use of the development and production performance of component manufacturers, parallel development approach, and highly organized product managers. Such performance has basically been retained until the 1990s at the level of individual projects. However, excessive reliance on these abilities led to the "excessive design" problem, which is now being compensated for by the "lean product" approach. The Americans and Europeans have caught up the Japanese with respect to the abilities listed above, but with only partial accomplishment. The Japanese have greatly reduced the development period owing to the 3-dimensional CAD/CAE and other new technologies. This trend of simplification in design will further proceed in future, invalidating the prediction that the strong yen would impair the competitiveness of Japanese enterprises leading to "hollowization". Mutual learning between enterprises is a very important feature in the international competition platform. The competition pattern is so mobile that timely and objective data are indispensable for arguments claiming any degree of credibility. This means that positive investigations into the dynamic processes of product development should be continued further.
