It has been passed for more than 40 years since I promoted to Instructor at School of Commerce, Waseda University in 1956. I have consistently studied management accounting in this period. Speaking in a world, I can feature my study approach as Inter-disciplinary Management Accounting because I have devoted myself to study the inter-disciplinary areas between management accounting and its adjacent disciplines. I have been successfully to develop the new inter-disciplinary fields called as Marketing Accounting, Research and Development Accounting, Logistics Accounting and Advertising Accounting etc. as my research results. I had the good opportunity to give the lecture on the genealogy and results of my study on Inter-disciplinary Management Accounting on special lecture session of the General Meeting of JAMA on sept. 5, 1997.

Many executives in the semiconductor business frequently question whether traditional product costing information is useful for product strategy formulation, particularly in deciding “real profitability” of the products. Semiconductor product cost (full cost) would dynamically decline when a synergy effect of the two unique factors is expected; huge potential demand with high price elasticity, and micro process manufacturing technology that would reduce the chip size. Therefore, no matter how precisely the product cost is calculated, it would not be relevant to deciding the product strategy and a future profitability of the product. From a product strategy point of view, it is very important to understand the dynamics of product profitability structures and, therefore, establish management systems which provide such information. This paper first reveals the mechanisms of how semiconductor product cost would dramatically decline with its unique characteristics. Then discussion turns toward the development of a profitability management system which supports formulation of product strategy by understanding the behavior of short-term and long-term profitability structures. The new system provides strategic decision support information including estimated changes in product costs and optimized price setting for each strategy alternative, product mix that will maximize long-term profit, and economies of the new product line investment.

This paper compares two industry leaders, namely Daiei and Itoyokado, with the aim of identifying how structural reforms fit into the overall management of large supermarkets and explaining the management systems that make high earnings possible.

Large supermarkets emerged as a new retail force during the recovery of the Japanese economy following World War II. They rode the wave of rapid growth and in no time joined the ranks of Japan's major enterprises. In the first half of the 1980s, however, economic recession and new types of competition took their toll on the industry. Sales plummeted and the big chill set in.

Large supermarkets launched structural reform movements(so-called “Gyoukaku”) to meet the changes in the business environment, enabling them to avoid any major crises. But overall performance after the reforms was less than stellar. Only Itoyokado managed to achieve high earnings. Daiei, for example, was not able to perform as well.

The factor directly impacting the earnings of each supermarket was the extent to which each improved its technology for managing inventory item by item. Such improvement in itemized control technology is the second of three stages in the reform movement mentioned above. What enabled Itoyokado to achieve high earnings was the redesign of its management systems around operational control for the execution of its strategy in its stores.

Aiming at labor saving in watering and fertilizing work by the introduction of string transfusion (ST) system in a greenhouse built on the farmland with fixed area for potted flower and applying manpower surplus, brought about by the above labor saving, to the increase in production, we studied the size of greenhouse and the way of installing bench to increase production quantity more with less labor saving and bench installation cost, using break-even analysis. First, the relation between the size of greenhouse and bench capacity or the relation between the size of greenhouse and cost was shown in figures, separating the case with fixed bench from the case with rolling bench. Then, as to the greenhouse with rolling bench, having optimum depth, obtained in this analysis, and frontage more than 10m (less than 12.6m), it was found that if we made its frontage wider, bench capacity became larger and cost became lower. This paper seems to be useful for studying the size of greenhouse and the installation of bench for the purpose of labor saving in work and the increase in production quantity on the farmland with limited area.