Organizational Capabilities of Product Development: International Competitiveness of Japanese Automakers

This paper reports the results of an international comparison of productivity in automotive product development in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. This comparative survey was commenced by Harvard University in 1985. The first survey analyzed data from the 1980s, and detailed results showing the superiority of Japanese manufacturers were published by Fujimoto and Clark (1993). Subsequently data for the 1990s was collected twice, in 1995 and 2000. This paper analyzes the data from the entire 20 year period and reports on key points.

The conclusions show that Japan's superior development productivity noted in the 1980s - measured by person-hours and development lead-time - continued until 2000. European and U.S. automakers had difficulty imitating Japanese firms' integrated organizational abilities. One fundamental problem is that the typical project member in Europe and the U.S. is highly specialized, with a narrow range of responsibilities. Since this problem arises from labor market systems, individual firms can do little to change it. This high degree of specialization means larger numbers of people involved in each project, making coordination complicated. Since project managers in Europe and the U.S. are also highly specialized, it is difficult for them to take responsibility for both product development and marketing (product concept) in the way that Japan's heavyweight project managers do.