In this paper, the author highlighted the importance of waste and recycling businesses of the industry by introducing the concept of “Vein Industry.” In Japan, form 1990s to the time of economical crisis triggered by the Lehman Shock in 2008, the system of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) has been adopted as a government postulate for waste management and recycling policy. Under the EPR, manufacturers began to enter the waste and recycling businesses, which had been operated mostly by the vein industry players. At the same time, barrier to entry to these businesses has eased for new comers from “Artery sector of the Industry.” For example, under the automobile recycling law, the Japanese recycling system has been introduced. Following these moves, in order to correct the conventional viewpoint, in which the manufacturer is divided from the recycler, to new one, in which both parties are involved in coordinated resource recycling, the author advocated an analytical viewpoint of the “Artery sector of the Industry” and “Vein sector of the Industry.”

However, the EPR for a specific product does not always improve economical efficiency. In fact, under the Act on Promotion of Small Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, which enacted in 2013, EPR was forced to withdraw since the law simply encouraged manufacturers going toward large-scale business and mechanization. There was a criticism for high cost operations of the Japanese automotive recycling system.

Meanwhile, processing and recycling of Automobile Shredding Residue (ASR) is secured under the automobile recycling law. For other shredding residues rather than automotive, however, proper processing is not guaranteed. Economic globalization placed significant impact on Japan's used vehicle market and recycling system. In other words, vehicles' wiring harnesses, plastic parts, etc. were exported to China and other overseas countries as “resources” form Japan to avoid high cost processing. However, in 2017, China's Xi Jinping administration, in terms of tightening environmental regulations, ordered an embargo on importation of “resources”. As a consequence, industrial waste of Japan lost an outlet named China and the entire industry is confused. Behind the scenes, there is China's ambition to realize its expansion plan dubbed “Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21^st century Maritime Silk Road,” thereby contending the initiative with Europe, U.S.A. and Japan in the field of the development of next-generation vehicles and infrastructure development towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as a result of China's constant pursue of its policy of increasing national prosperity and military power.

It's been 20 years since The Eco-Town Plan started in 1997 in Japan. The purpose of The Eco-Town Plan is growth of the recycling business in region. The scheme of The Eco-Town Plan is the same as a traditional regional industrial policy in Japan. The government appoints areas and gives subsidies. This trial succeeded to some extent. Some laws in conjunction with the recycling that was passed in the 2000s supported this growth. The accumulation of heavy and chemical industries supported recycling business in Eco-Town, too. However, the growth of The Eco-Town stopped today. The number of the Eco-Town increased to 26 in first ten years, but stopped afterwards. Some firms located in The Eco-Town went bankrupt.

This paper analyzes The Kitakyushu Eco-Town that is mentioned to have most succeeded in Japan. Why would it succeed? The cause of the success is accumulation of heavy industry, active support of the local government and substantial infrastructure. However, Kitakyushu Eco-Town does not continue growing up, and the growth stops. There is the company located in Kitakyushu Eco-Town in a tendency to decrease. Many recycling factories suffer from lack of the waste. The recycling industrial growth process has been over. In such situation, what kind of policy will be required?

The purpose of this paper is to propose that the commercial aircraft industry shifts the location to non-metropolitan regions. Prior to World War II, many aircraft companies agglomerated in the Chubu, Kansai, and Tokyo metropolitan areas of Japan. However, Japanese aircraft companies and suppliers in these three metropolitan areas have begun to disperse into non-metropolitan areas. As the location behavior in the commercial aircraft industry depends on the production system, some prime manufacturers in the commercial aircraft industry, such as Boeing, have changed their way of ordering, in particular, with the production of the B787.

The aircraft industry has many factories in these three metropolitan regions of Japan. However some local municipalities have sought to attract aircraft suppliers. As a result, aircraft companies have been able to use some products from the regional production system located in Iida (Nagano Prefecture), Niigata, and Kanazawa (Ishikawa Prefecture). According to a case study of the Yamagata Prefecture, there were 27 aircraft industry companies in Yamagata Prefecture in March 2018. A number of small- and medium-sized companies entered the industry in Yamagata Prefecture after 2010.

This paper introduces the diversity in supply chains, from raw materials to finished goods, that the author has identified heretofore by focusing on timing controllers, and then questions differences in timing controllers by comparing supply chains across industries.

The paper comes to the following conclusions: (1) there are companies that can be called timing controllers in supply chains, ranging from raw materials to finished products; (2) timing controllers vary by supply chain, and include diverse industries, from commercial businesses to specialty firms; (3) overall costs are reduced because of their existence; and (4) timing controllers are intermediaries that separate, particularly temporally, production and consumption, and provide a fine tuning system that goes far beyond that imagined in prior studies.

new business model called ‘Authorized Generic (AG) ’ appeared in the pharmaceutical industry in Japan in 2013, and its sales volume has steadily increased. Although AG has 'generic' in its name, it has many characteristics similar to that of ‘branded’, and the subsidiaries of brand pharmaceutical companies sell AG in many cases. Compared with general generics, AG has some merits in terms of its pre-sale, advanced efficacies, or other competitive advantages. Since AG has both elements of being generic (considering its price or sales timing) and branded (pertaining to its manufacturing process, manufacturing factory, drug substance, and additives), its position has not been decided yet. Therefore, we surveyed and analyzed the AG business based on its characteristics and so on.

After a thorough study, we came to a conclusion that AG is more of a branded, with reduced prices, than being a generic. In addition, we have also found out that AG has the role of preventing generics from dominating the market; it can be thought of as Product Life Cycle Management which is a strategy to maximize product values for innovating companies. As a result of comparison with other Product Life Cycle Management strategies, AG is considered to be an effective strategy in the declining phase of Product Life Cycle. Moreover, the competitive advantage of AG is high and it even gains an overwhelming share in the market. Therefore, there is a possibility that generic companies will decline as concerns about changes in the industrial structure of generic companies arise.

A lot of discussions have been done in the United States, which has been an advanced country of AG business since 2000s, but a full-scale discussion has not been conducted in Japan. However, because the drug prices of Bio-same (as AG) and Biosimilar as general generics are different, the influence on AG's medium and long-term industrial structure has finally become a problem in biopharmaceuticals in the recent year. In the future, it is hoped that an active discussion on AG in low molecular drugs will be done.

Carly Fiorina who was CEO in HP presented company vison toward the future of “e-service on the tap” at presentation titled “Bullet-proof Infrastructure for the E-service Word” at TELECOM 99, Geneva on October 1st, 1999.

Her vision was realized by rising many cloud service firms such as Salesforce. com (Salesforce), Amazon Web Service (AWS) and so on. Now days, we can say we are in the transition to Cloud first world. Expansion of Cloud world has been getting to become reflecting company strategy of giant IT companies in US and Japan such as IBM, HP, Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi and NEC. US firms made drastic decision and IBM was getting more focus on service and, HP and Dell were back to products-oriented companies. However, Fujitsu, Hitachi and NEC are straggling to fit their business model to Cloud world. Because they could not change the strategy to provide all IT pillars from product to services. In this paper, I will try to assess the possibility of revival by integration service capabilities to cloud service in Japanese IT giants.

This study aims to clarify the efforts of home appliance recycling by home appliance manufacturers and in particular, their entry into the recycled plastics business. It compares the achievement points of each company. In addition, this paper examines the reasons some companies are especially advanced in their recycling business initiatives.

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). And now, the system has significant achievements especially the plastic recycling has largely contributed to the improvement of recycling rate. This paper is to study the efforts of manufacturers that have produced the results of this recycled resource.

In conclusion, in this paper, “recycling” refers to the home appliance recycling business; “rematerialized” means recycled plastic business. Seven leading manufacturers have established their own recycle plant, and continue to invest R&D and equipment. There are three companies entering the re-materialized stage, in other words achieving closed-loop recycling. It is Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic and Hitachi. Both Mitsubishi Electric and Panasonic also have the most advanced technology, but Mitsubishi Electric was the only one able to realize a large recycled plastic business. There are two reasons for Mitsubishi Electric's excellence: ①by securing the scale of excellent home appliance recycling facilities and material enterprises and ②trading at relative prices that fluctuate less than the market price on the premise of continuous trading.

This paper identifies problems unique to natural materials supply in the automobile parts manufacturing sector. It investigates methods and solutions through a case study of a car parts supplier that manufactures steering wheels from bamboo. Parts suppliers that use natural materials to manufacture automobile parts are hampered by supply instability due to uncertain material procurement and fluctuating demand from automakers. This study found that these issues can be solved by inventory control implemented by parts suppliers. The adjustment leads to expansion of inventory. Therefore, the supply chain of natural materials should be designed on the premise of holding a considerable amount of inventory.

In supply chain design, it is usual to avoid stockpiling large inventories in order to minimize costs. However, this case study shows that reducing inventory is not always the best strategy. This paper suggests that parts suppliers could play a key role in overcoming problems peculiar to supply chains of natural materials. Parts suppliers can coordinate downstream sales information with upstream material supply information, adjust the buffer inventory, and modify the difference. Communication of downstream information to and cooperation with upstream material suppliers will be essential to the stable procurement of natural materials.