Chinese automobile production has been expanding. China produced 7.2 million vehicles in 2006 and became the second largest automobile market behind the U. S. However, China's automotive industry has two major deficiencies. One is a lack of original product development ability, and the other is a lack of export capability. This paper discusses how the Chinese automobile manufacturers introduce product development technology from foreign manufacturers.
Chinese automobile manufacturers who have a joint venture with foreign automobile manufacturers are trying to introduce product development technology from their partners through their joint business.
However, Chinese automobile manufacturers who do not have a joint venture are trying to copy the technology illegally. They decide on a foreign model to focus on, and then apply reverse engineering to that focal model. Reverse engineering means that they completely dismantle an original vehicle and make a draft for each part. Based on the drafts, they manufacture the parts and then assemble “copy” vehicles. Their manufacturing costs are lower than those of foreign competitors; however, in terms of product quality, their models are inferior.
Chinese automobile manufacturers are also trying to merge with foreign automobile manufacturers in hopes of acquiring their products and brands. However, these merger strategies tend not to proceed successfully because of various kinds of difficulties.

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The Asian market is becoming increasingly important, and is now on a par with that of the United States; together these areas are the “focus market” of world automakers. Now, although the initial expansion of the car market in Asia took place in ASEAN nations, the Chinese market has become the fastest-growing.
The automakers in Japan have acquired a high share in the ASEAN market, but they are latecomers to the Chinese market. It is a matter of urgency that the automakers in Japan attempt to increase their share in the Chinese market to a level that equals that of the United States.
In this paper, first, we analyze the threats and opportunities, and the management structural reform that Japanese automakers now face. In the 90s, the ratio of sales vs. cost of parts and raw materials increased. As a result, Japanese automakers decreased profit and fell into crisis because of the sudden rise in the exchange rate of dollar to yen and excessive overseas production. We clarify that the crisis was overcome by the “Global structural adjustment” of Japanese automakers, and clarify the strategy and the lessons learned from the crisis evasion. Second, we multilaterally analyze the market competition trends in China, and evaluate the competitive ability of the world automakers in the Chinese market. Moreover, we clarify the success conditions required to remain in the Chinese market in the future.
Third, we clarify the management strategy and the success conditions of Japanese automakers in the Asian market. And we propose a strategy for Japanese automakers to win a large share of the Asian market as “Point of success condition 10”.

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Recently Hyundai has increased its presence in the world automobile industry by expanding overseas production. But, when an automobile producer expands into a foreign country, its productivity is decreased through increased transportation costs. Thus it is necessary for automobile producers to also take parts suppliers to the foreign country. In other words, location with parts suppliers matters.
In this paper, to estimate the current growth of Hyundai and the Korean automobile industry in general, we analyzed the location of Korean parts suppliers in comparison with that of Japanese parts suppliers.
The results are summarized as follows:
1. Korean parts suppliers are concentrated in China, while Japanese parts suppliers are located close to their production centers in North America, Europe, and Asia.
2. In North America and Europe, there is a large disparity between the number of Korean automobile producers' production plants and the number of their parts suppliers.
3. In comparing the Hyundai Alabama plant and the Toyota Canada plant in North America, it can be seen that Toyota has 82 Japanese suppliers located nearby, while there are only 11 Korean suppliers around the Hyundai plant meaning that Toyota's local procurement rate of parts is higher than Hyundai's by 10-20%.
4. In order to maintain growth, Hyundai must raise the rate of procurement of parts from already established local parts suppliers. This expansion of transactions with non-Korean parts suppliers would be accompanied by M & A or strategic alliances between Korean and non-Korean parts suppliers.

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Kyushu has been developing as the new agglomerate region of Automobile Industry in Japan. Since 1975, the automobile assembly plant of Nissan-Kyushu has started to work, and then the automobile industry began to take root deeply in Kyushu now.
After that, Toyota-Kyushu Co. built its plant in Kyushu in 1992, and Daihatsu-Kyushu Co. also built in 2004. Now, the production of the automobile in this region reached 900, 000 a year (8.8% in the whole country).
We can divide the agglomerated process into three terms which depends on the three automakers extended its business in Kyushu, that is (1) 1973∼1985; Nissan-Kyushu (2) 1986∼1997; Toyota-Kyushu (3) 1998∼; Daihatsu.
The third term has a distinctive characteristic, which is the associated companies made newly their way into Kyushu during the term, were located some limited regions. The first-tier suppliers which began to work between 1986 and 1997 spread all over Kyushu, even to Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures. However, the suppliers which came after 1998, built their factories only in Fukuoka, Saga and Oita prefectures, especially along the National Highway 10 from Kitakyushu city to Nakatsu and Usa cities. The important causes of the phenomenon are as follows; (1) the lack of the efficient staff was relatively dissolved. (2) Decline of the birth rate and aging society caused the undersupply of the efficient staff in the countryside. (3) The temporary office staff business is penetrating in the society. (4) The cost to build factories is declining in the industrial region where the infrastructure is substantial. This phenomenon that the scope of the location is condensed occurred even though many new suppliers are finding their way into this region. This means that the scope of the industrial agglomeration is getting narrow in Japan whether the deindustrialization comes about or not.

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This paper considered the influence with some policies about automobile distribution that Chinese government promulgated and carried out since entry into the WTO. What is “the brand sales service system” which Chinese government proposed? What is the mechanism, the rights and the duty that each subject should accomplish? These problems were analyzed. In addition, the various influences given to the whole industry were analyzed. For example, the joint management of foreign capital manufacturers (include Japanese, American companies and Volkswagens which is a Germany company), local manufacturers (including major, medium and small companies) and the existing automobile distributors receive influence were analyzed. Through the promulgation and enforcement of its policies, the Chinese government is going to improve automobile distribution that currently exists in the state of confusion. However, the writer believes that the excessive strengthening of position control reinforcement to their sales channel by the manufacturers is caused by abuse of a manufacturer's superior position that can lead to serious consequences.

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In recent years, appliances and automobiles have been called embedded system products. Market for embedded system products is growing more every year, and its size was 59 trillion yen in 2004. Sources of added value of these products depend on embedded software implemented in them. At present there is a very large market for embedded software in the industry, and software vendors have responded to the demand with utilizing outsourcing and offshoring. However, because of increase of outsourcing and offshoring in the industry, the number of quality problems of embedded system products caused by embedded software defect has increased.
This article argues that there are achievements and problems of outsourcing and offshoring in Japanese embedded software industry. Especially this focuses on correlation between quality of the products and outsourcing and offshoring. “Outsourcing” involves transferring or sharing software development processes and/or business function to onshore outside suppliers in this article. And “offshoring” means transferring or sharing software development processes to offshore outside suppliers.
Firstly overview of embedded software industry is described, and then achievement and problem of outsourcing and offshoring in the industry are analyzed. And in conclusion the correlation between quality of the products and outsourcing is considered.

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Automobile makers in ASEAN have changed the export strategies from the inside of ASEAN to the outside of ASEAN since the Asian economic crisis in 1997. ASEAN automobile makers are playing important role in the global automobile market since the global cars produced by ASEAN automobile makers are contributing to world wide market.
The auto parts purchase from ASEAN of the ASEAN automobile makers are increasing significantly. In spite of this fact that auto parts purchase from ASEAN is increasing, “perfect” auto parts complementation may not succeed. The auto parts export of Thailand represents the largest volume in ASEAN, and auto parts export of Thailand in ASEAN is increasing. Thailand plays the most important role in the ASEAN auto parts market. Other countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, may lose positions of auto parts supplier in ASEAN, and expansion of the free trade area may result in decreasing the importance of auto parts complementation in ASEAN.
The ASEAN auto parts makers are increasing auto parts export to outside ASEAN every year. Although the expansion of the free trade area in East Asia increases auto parts export from ASEAN, ASEAN will face competitions from China. By supplying their auto parts to India who has huge population and playing a gateway role of auto parts trade from China to India. ASEAN tries to became a hub in the East Asian free trade area.

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One time, research and development activities is the least globalized function among all the functions operated by multinationals. And, in 2000s, the globalization of research and development activities has begun to change to show the new aspects-the location is expanding to the developing countries, and the function is expanding to the product development, also in the personal computer industry.
From the late 1980s, the personal computer industry began to employ the totally different form of production from the conventional vertical integration. This is so called “global production network, ” in which the whole procedure of the production is divided into several steps and locates each step to the geographically dispersed places, passing the national and company's border. In addition to that, from the early 2000s, the procedure of the product development began to be further divided into several steps and located to the geographically dispersed places including the developing countries.
How can we identify the new phenomenon? In this paper, I have tried to propose a conceptual framework to identify the phenomenon.
I first analyzed how the globalization of the development activities has been changed in 2000s. Then moved to the reasons why the phenomenon was occurred. They were seeking for the lower development cost, increasing endowment of the skilled R & D personnel, and the development of the ICT technology and increasing modularity of the architecture of the personal computer.
At last, I proposed a conceptual framework, “Global Development Network”, to identify the phenomenon of the globalization of the development activities in the Global Production Network of the personal computer industry. And, I have also seen the transformation of the Global Production Network of the personal computer industry after the emergence of the Global Development Network. The emergence of it has raised the presence of Taiwan in the Global Production Network of the personal computer.

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The relationship between wartime regional controlled distributors called “Jihai” and postwar dealers has been said as a cause of Toyota's advantage of sales capability against Nissan. My previous research had already shown that the Toyota's domination on the competition setting up their dealers. Its evidences was the continuity as a company with trade name change between each Jihai and dealer, and rapidity of foundation of dealers. But it haven't surveyed the managerial resources inside of Jihai concretely. So in this research I focused on transfer of each executive from Jihai to postwar dealers of Toyota and Nissan.
Results of this research are below. In general, Jihai's choice which manufacturer it dealt with depended on the final consensus of whole executives. This means that each executive inside a Jihai had significant influence on the choice. This fact makes us presume that trade name change by Jihai was uneasy decision-making, and that Toyota won such a project, that is, recruiting competition of managerial human resources in number and in speed.
And the cases of 3 Toyota dealers which made those decisions very rapidly implied that they had sustainable and strong connections with, and loyalties to the previous partners throughout wartime. This is the common characteristic. 2 cases the dealers have been set up by means of trade name change of Jihai showed us the dynamically stabilized constructions of executives throughout wartime. On the other hand, from the case of dealer it hadn't been set up by trade name change of Jihai, however, we could realize the significance of Jihai as the sauce of managerial human resources again. But, the case implicated the necessity of reference to not only executives of each Jihai but also functions and business domain of them. This means that manysided survey of managerial resources of both of Jihai and newly founded dealers is quite important and meaningful for the comparative and historical research of the competition of marketing channel construction in automobile industry.

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This paper analyzes the relationship between organizational form and its healthcare insurance plan which is sold in managed care market in USA. In managed care plan, there are PPO (Prepaid Provider Organization) which adopts FFS (Fee-for-Service) and HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) and POS (Point of Service) which adopts capitation payment, and these plans become the major healthcare insurance in USA today.
As results of using multinominal logit model, it is found the followings. First, profitoriented organizations tend to sell PPO which is easier to earn the profit than HMO. Second, Insurance Companies of Blue Cross/Sheild series tend to sell HMO which do not charge out-of-pocket per services. Third, HMO and POS which is required strict management of quality of services tend to be accredited by evaluation organizations.

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In this article, I explain why some Digital Still Camera (DSC) companies were able to get competitive advantage for a long term on the Japan market. I analyze survey data of display price to explain it.
The procedure of explanation are (1) What kind of competition environment was the Japanese market?; (2) What kind of competition did the finished product companies develop at the Japan market?; (3) What kind of thing was an action to be tied in with competitive advantage?; (4) What should they solve to do it?
What I explain in this procedure is the company which had the competitive advantage practiced dynamic change of products line ongoingly. The dynamic change of products line lets new problems face DSC companies. New Problems are (A) Developing various models by a due date of new product release in limited human resources; (B) Producing various models in large quantities by a due date of new product release in a short term; (C) Not generating the situation to sell new-generation models and previous-generation models at the same time. I came to think hypothetically that they solved three problems by (a) platform; (b) vertical startup in the production; (c) Taking closely connection among the production section, the sales section and the purchasing section in the state that exclueded sectional optimum.

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