最近，「IoT（Internet of Things）」や「第４次産業革命」といった言葉が，産業界や各種メディアで頻繁に取り上げられるようになっている。これらは単なる流行語や一過性のブームではなく，いま現実に世界で生じつつある産業の底流変化と深くかかわっている動きである。

　本稿では，IT（情報技術）の進化と普及により「デジタルでつながる世界」が急速に拡大したことが，世界中で産業や事業の構造を激変させている様子を概観する。注目すべき経済事象・技術トレンドとして，異業種間競争の頻発，コモディティ化の高速化，製造業のサービス化，IoT，人工知能（AI），シェアリングエコノミー，仮想現実（VR）・拡張現実（AR），3Dプリンター等のキーワードを取り上げ，これらを相互の関連性に注目しつつ解説する。

　続いて，第４次産業革命の進展がもたらす産業構造と事業環境の変化に対応して，日本の製造業企業が生き残るための課題について考察する。

The purpose of this paper is to make a proposal for industrial agglomeration of the commercial aircraft industry in Chubu Region. There has been many companies taken part in that industry in Aichi prefecture and Gifu prefecture which are so-called Chubu Region in the narrow sense. We have been called it industrial agglomeration of commercial aircraft industry. However locations of the Japanese aircraft companies and the suppliers do not agglomerate in Chubu Region according my survey data. In other words, locations of the factories and the suppliers depend on types of airplanes. These locations trend to decentralization for the other regions. For example, main factories of B787 and MRJ locate in Chubu Region, but some factories of B777 and B767 locate in the other regions.

Recently, Boeing has announced a new type of Commercial Aircraft, B777X. Some companies of Japanese heavy industry participate in the production of B777X.Partly, some factories for B777X chose the location in Chubu Region. On the contrary, many factories locate in the other regions except Chubu Region. Thus Chubu Region is not absolute industrial agglomeration for the Japanese Commercial Aircraft Industry now. This fact give an impact to the research of industrial location. Because Chubu Region has been thought for industrial agglomeration for the Japanese Aircraft Industry. Therefore the most important thing is to consider if Chubu Region will keep on being Industrial agglomeration in the Japanese Commercial Aircraft Industry, or if the other region will become to industrial agglomeration in it near future.

The Tohoku region (Northeast region of Japan including six prefectures such as Iwate, Miyagi, and so on) has suffered from deindustrialization which has caused its population to decrease. In order to overcome this situation, high expectations for the automotive industry have been raised in the Tohoku region, since the last decade. For the last several years, automotive production in the region has exceeded five hundred thousand vehicles per year, thanks to their favorable sales. However, an overview of the current status of its production model’s supply chain, a certain amount of added value has been generated outside of the region, including Mikawa area where Toyota has its headquarters and its major suppliers are located. Thus, the economic ripple effect from the automotive industry has fallen short of local expectations.

Regarding the conventional automotive industry, in order to raise the economic ripple effect from the automotive industry, there are many things to do for both parts procurement and human resource development. Researchers have pointed out these things many times, however the Tohoku region have not overcome it yet.

The Automotive industry is now facing its paradigm change. In order to increase its presence in the next generation automotive business, this paper points out one of the possible measures for the Tohoku region. That is, making close tie-ups between universities and their researchers in the region and increased linkages local suppliers.

This paper clarifies the causes of the increase of abandoned vehicles in Pacific Ocean Islands Countries. We find firstly that there are many abandoned vehicles without properly scrapped. This means that the abandoned vehicles discharge the harmful materials into the atmosphere and ground. Secondly the reason why the vehicle owners abandoned their vehicle is that the profitability of scrapping and recycling business are very low. Thirdly the reason of the low profitability of scrapping and recycling business results from the social, economic and geographical characteristics. These characteristics are the smallness, distance and dispersiveness. Fourthly we define the countries of these characteristics as the Country with Difficulties in Automobile Recycling. It is impossible for the Country with Difficulties in Automobile Recycling to complete the full scrapping and recycling process. Therefore the scrapping and recycling business shrink. As a result of that, the numbers of abandoned vehicles continue increasing.

Our proposals consist of four basic proposals. Core one is related with the improvement of economic profitability of the scrapping firms. In order to improve the economic profitability of the scrapping firms, we have to special proposals to overcome the handicaps with which the Pacific Islands Countries confront.

Other three basic proposals are related to overcome these handicaps. First basic proposal is to offer the incentives to the owners to bring their disused vehicles to the scrapping factories. Second basic proposal is to remove thoroughly the accumulated and long term abandoned vehicles by utilizing the Japan Automobile Recycling Center’s special fund. Fourth basic proposal is that Japanese government establish the Buying and Bringing Back Center, which buy the recycle materials and used parts from the scrapping firm and bring back them to Japan. At the same time this Center controls whole process of recycle scheme.

This study aims to clarify how the competition mechanism works in the electric home appliances recycling system in Japan. The Law for the Recycling of Specified Kinds of Home Appliances (“Home Appliances Recycling Law”) , enforced in April 2001, promotes consumer disposal of end-of-life appliances properly by having retailers collect and deliver them to manufacturers, who recycle them according to their type (air conditioners, television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines). After 15 years, the system has significant achievements: the recycling rates have grown continuously and the recycling fees declined.

We consider a three-layered mechanism of cooperation and competition designed by seven major manufacturers. The first layer is the cooperation framework of the whole home appliances industry. The Association for Electric Home Appliances (AEHA) manages and distributes the recycling fees as a part of the institutional infrastructure. The second layer is two alliances of manufacturers (Groups A and B) and each alliance shares a nation-wide network of recycling plants. Due to their differing allying principles, Group A has a cost advantage, while Group B has advantage in recycling rates at the beginning. However, after the 15 years, both alliances are catching up with each other. The two alliances compete, and manufacturers cooperate with each other within the alliances.

The third layer is individual manufacturers, especially the seven major manufacturers, and each has several ways to incorporate their investment and expense for the recycling system into their own profit. In other words, for the manufacturers, the home appliance recycling is potentially a feasible business, which is also the core motivation for promoting the whole recycling system. Continuous R&D and facilities investment by each manufacturer drives the progress.

In this paper, we argue how Japanese auto-industry can enhance cost competitiveness in emerging markets in order to they maintain international competitive advantage. We submit that the incremental innovation, Japanese auto - industry has consolidated for a long time, interrupts themselves to adapt emerging markets flexibly. The main facts why Japanese corporations face difficulties in emerging markets are as follows. Firstly, almost every Japanese corporation might recognize their products possess superior quality to which emerging markets never prefer. Secondary, Japanese corporations have been caught in their own trap to observe their intra-firm institution, i.e. design criterion, strictly.

The automobile industry is currently facing the need for: 1) development of motorization technology for electric vehicles, and 2) new technologies and know-how, such as automatic driving, and the significant investment this requires in R&D. Considering this, automobile manufacturers are increasingly expecting suppliers to provide development proposals, in addition to traditional QCD requirements. However, there are limitations to the extent that medium and small suppliers can improve their development proposal capacity independently. Thus, this paper discusses the following three areas based on a case study of OVEC, which has been pursued primarily by public institutions within Okayama Prefecture. First, it outlines the industry-academia-government collaboration aimed for local supplier skills development. Second, it shows how there have been changes in the division of labor between automobile manufacturers and suppliers with regard to R&D. Finally, it indicates how industry-academiagovernment collaboration, with a focus on skills development, can act as a method for improving development proposal capacity of medium and small suppliers.

OVEC was an industry-academia-government collaboration model led by public institutions, which concentrated on generating leading suppliers within the prefecture. This paper focuses on two aspects of this model. The first is the way OVEC played the role of a “Ba” to generate the knowledge creation process. The second is the way OVEC played a complementary role with regard to R&D of the next generation automobiles at Mitsubishi Motors. Namely, within this Ba, local suppliers increased their development proposal capacity. In the future, this will allow suppliers to not only play a significant role in complementing automobile manufacturers’ R&D, but also to expand their dealings with industries outside their primary clients. This ultimately leads to the revitalization of local areas.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the latest development of the automotive industry in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) which has been playing an important role in the international division of labor in Europe since the Enlargement of European Union (EU). In particular, we will consider the new role of CEE in the European automotive production system by empirically analyzing and examining the emergences of Research and Development (R&D) activities. At the same time, we will explore the basic structure of the international network production / division of labor model of the European automotive industry and the direction of its future development.

As a whole, the development of R&D business in CEE is weak, and most of the automotive R&D activities remain concentrated on the EU core (Western European) countries. In the Czech Republic, although industrial upgrading such as the rise of R&D business is progressing, but its activities are focused mainly on production line improvement and productive technology support. The R&D business in the Czech automotive industry is limited to the technical support of production. It has the character of non-strategic, lower-end standardized R&D activities at the level of daily work. The development of R&D activities in CEE is based on a strategic coupling between the existing local R&D assets and the strategic R&D needs of automotive Transnational Companies (TNCs).

The rise of R&D in CEE has not changed the marginal position and the peripheral nature of CEE in the international division of labor of the European automobile production networks. Although the automotive industry in the Central and Eastern European countries is expected as an indispensable industry for the development of the national economy, one of the keys to look for the future is how it is tied to the production networks spreading on the European scale.

This paper is intended as an investigation of the functions of temporary cluster in the formation of medical equipment industry based on the case study of Medical Creation Fukushima (MCF). As a result of the analysis on MCF, the following six hypotheses were derived.

First, temporary cluster affect to the other forms of organization in the knowledge creation not only in the short term, but medium and long term by local buzz, global buzz and global pipeline. Secondly, the influence makes a change the synthetic knowledge of supply chain and project in inter-firm to the analytical knowledge base. Thirdly, the temporary cluster accelerates the innovation of the firms and actors to be heterogeneous aggregate. Fourthly, permanent cluster is induced to innovation by the interaction of temporary cluster, in addition to that, it makes a change the focus of knowledge creation on the stable inter-firm networks for long time. Fifthly, the local resources are important factor for the functions of temporary cluster to work effectively. Sixthly, the double temporary cluster that are mutual exhibit with overseas exhibitions promotes to build of trust between with cluster facilitators each other and to strengthen for the global pipeline.

Considering the above, Japan’s industrial cluster achievement can be regarded as a system to transform the existing industrial district into the new one that can be applied for the growth market by using the function of the temporary cluster.

Japan’s musical instrument industry grew during the nation’s postwar period of rapid economic growth, centered on piano manufacturing. As domestic demand grew, the industry’s exports also captured high market shares and strong reputations internationally. However, due to slowing domestic sales as a result of Japan’s low birth rate and diversification of consumers’ interests, as well as price competition with emerging markets for exports, Japan’s musical instrument industry faces difficult circumstances.

As the Japanese musical instrument industry reaches a turning point amid tough market conditions, wind instrument makers manufacturing flutes and saxophones are making particularly strenuous efforts. They have earned very strong reputations overseas, including in Europe and North America, in the field of Western musical instruments. Japan long has been home to a number of flute manufacturers, such as Muramatsu, that are world leaders in technology and product development, and Japanese saxophone makers, such as Yamaha and Yanagisawa, are also highly regarded internationally for the quality of their products, from entry-level models to high-end professional saxophones.

Focusing on the product development strategies of flute and saxophone makers in Japan, this paper considers product strategies and market sales over the past 30 years. Flute makers have shifted from mass-production models to diverse product lines, increasing added value through the use of new metal materials and improvements in their instruments and reflecting these in their prices. Saxophone makers also have continued steady product development, differentiating their products through new added value amid international price competition.

This study confirms a common trend among Japanese wind instrument manufacturers producing flutes and saxophones toward a strategy of shifting to higher-end models and expanding model lineups, through continual development of new products. It also shows that the new materials and new features introduced by these manufacturers are highly regarded in the market, and that the distinctive new models are a factor behind rising prices.

Based on social changes and potential problems faced by convenience stores, this study analyzed the business models of convenience stores offering Mobile Sales (MS) and Homedelivery Services (HDS), and then discussed the strategic significance in relation to improving relative businesses. By analyzing case studies of typical enterprises and conducting comparative analyses with other retailing formats, we reached the following conclusions. First, MS and HDS of convenience stores are still in the exploratory stage, but experience accumulated so far has been flexibly applied to the trial processes and technical innovations have been gained through trial and error. Secondly, unique competitive advantages of MS and HDS compared to the other retail formats may emerge, with the precondition that the convenience store had fully exploited its specialties – “small lot, short lead time and high level of convenience.” However, a convenience store must construct a more efficient sales system and pursue a more sweeping low-cost strategy to realize the aforementioned advantages. We put emphasis on the development of MS and HDS to expand into new markets and admit that direct contributions of the business are limited for the industry at the present stage. In the longer term, the promotion of MS and HDS will encourage evolution of the business model and retail format of convenience stores, and will become an excellent example of shared-value creation.