This paper presents the results of an empirical study on the relationship between quality management practices and competitive performance in Japanese manufacturing companies. The data was gathered from two surveys including the common sample of twenty-seven Japanese manufacturing companies in the 1990s and the 2000s. Statistical techniques are used to compare the degree of implementation of the eleven quality management practices and their impact on different dimensions of competitive performance between two periods. Findings of this study highlight the stability and consistency of the Japanese quality management, which can be used as one of the strategic weapons for maintaining competitive advantage of Japanese manufacturing companies.
During the 1990s, the Japanese economy has suffered from a long recession. The growth rate has markedly declined. Many companies have suffered from low profits or financial losses. However, some well-managed Japanese manufacturing companies still continue to hold their strong competitive power in the global market. The survival and prosperity of Japanese manufacturers are achieved by their Japanese way of management such as total quality management (TQM), just-in-time (JIT) production, total productive maintenance (TPM), and concurrent engineering, and their ability to create horizontal linkage structure throughout the communication network. Those are real strengths of Japanese manufacturers, besides of their technological advantages as demonstrated by Morita et al. (2001) and Matsui (2002a). Quality management has been recognized as single most critical success factor in Japan's manufacturing (Imai, 1986; Ohno, 1988). Quality management in Japan is characterized as company-wide participation, emphasis on employees training, quality circles, quality diagnoses, statistical methods, and national-wide campaign. People from all levels of management and workers are involved in the company-wide quality management or total quality management (Schroeder and Flynn, 2001, Matsui, 2002b, Schonberger, 1986 and Schonberger, 2007). This concept intends to not only control quality levels of products by applying statistical methods and other analytical techniques, but also manage all kinds of work properly centered on quality. While the emergent trends in Japanese management are studied and presented in several academic papers and articles regarding manufacturing strategy (Fujimoto, 2004), business restructuring by vertical and horizontal alliances (Kono and Clegg, 2001), supplier involvement in product development (Takeishi, 2001), and transforming individual skills to organizational capability (Sako, 1999), there is a little evidence on how Japanese quality management is longitudinally maintained for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of manufacturing companies which are coping with fierce competition from other developed countries or emergent economies. In order to address this need, this paper presents results of an empirical study on the relationship of quality management practices and competitive performance in Japanese manufacturing companies. This objective is accomplished by analyzing a set of data gathered from two surveys, which includes the common sample of twenty-seven Japanese manufacturing companies conducted in 1993–1994 and 2003–2004. Eleven measurement scales are utilized to measure different aspect of quality management. Findings of this study highlight the robustness, stability, and consistence of Japanese quality management and its positive relationship to the competitive performance in manufacturing plants. This study provides empirical evidence that Japanese manufacturing companies explore quality managements as a strategic weapon for improving competitive advance during the 1990s and the 2000s. The remaining of this paper presents the analytical research framework, which is followed by description of data collection, measurement testing, and hypothesis testing. The last three sections discuss the important findings, limitations, and final conclusions.
The Japanese economy has encountered several crises during the 1990s and the 2000s. Japanese companies still face with the problems caused by the burst of the bubble economy and the fierce competition from other developed countries or emergent economies. But it is believed that they overcome these problems successfully because the manufacturing sector still remains competitive. As a core of Japanese production system, quality management is now almost half-of-century old and seems built to endure. This study suggests the stability of most quality management practices, which have been still utilized to maintain the competitive advantage of Japanese manufacturing companies. Focusing on a set of eleven quality management practices, this study reveals their general contribution to competitive performance in Japanese manufacturing companies in both periods. In addition, the evidence of evolution on Japanese quality management is detected. By the time, the Japanese manufacturing plants become more focused on the interaction with customers and involving customers in quality improvement activities. The influence of shop floor communication and information sharing on the competitive performance of the plants has been also increased. We observe that the high performance manufacturing plants give strong focuses on implementation of small group problem solving, employee suggestions, and information feedback. The results of analysis indicate the linkage between quality management practices and competitive performance in terms of on-time delivery and volume flexibility in the 2000s. The findings of this study suggest that such components of quality management as leadership commitment, process management, and communication and information sharing should be explored to achieve high competitive performance.
