Everyone is talking about “Japan’s lost twenty years” and “the decline of Japanese manufacturing”, but what I want to say is that Japan has already completed the layout of its manufacturing industry and firmly occupied the high end of the industrial chain. In the process of seemingly retreating to advance, it has achieved a small and beautiful transformation.
The road to transformation of Japan’s manufacturing industry
One: Internal factors
Although some Japanese manufacturing companies have left the terminal consumer market, they are not forced to withdraw, but choose to withdraw actively and transform to the commercial market that requires higher technical thresholds and is not fiercely competitive. They are still strong competitors in the market. For example, Hitachi’s elevators, Sharp’s display screens, Sony’s cameras, etc.
In fact, Japan’s domestic electronic manufacturing groups have long started to adjust their industrial structure. As an integrator of the structural adjustment of the manufacturing industry chain, the Japanese Industrial Innovation Agency plays a vital role. It was established by many Japanese chaebol giants such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi in collaboration with government authorities. For example, the agency has cooperated with Renesas Electronics Co., Ltd., Fujitsu Limited, and Panasonic Corporation to establish a new subsidiary in the field of semiconductor design, combining the advantages of the three companies in image processing, communication technology, etc., and is committed to improving the research and development capabilities of large-scale integrated circuit systems (LSI) used in smartphones and automotive manufacturing braking.
While strengthening resource integration and collaborative cooperation, they are quietly waiting for another field to drive the expansion of the electronics industry. One direction is the Internet of Things industry led by smart cities and smart grids. In order to gain a first-mover advantage, as early as October 2012, Toshiba and Hitachi proposed to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to establish a new standardization technical committee (TC) on electric energy storage systems, and it was approved. This is the first standardization technical committee in the field of smart grids set up by Japan as the main body, and Japan has also been selected as the international director responsible for the operation of the committee.
Therefore, relying solely on the comparison of the GDP growth and decline of China and Japan and the news that some well-known Japanese companies have suffered huge losses or have been acquired by Chinese-backed companies, the public opinion will only deepen the misunderstanding of the people. Looking back at ourselves, many of the “Made in China” products that we are proud of are actually just assembling, and many key technologies are still in the hands of foreign capital. It’s just a matter of the pot calling the kettle black.
Second: External factors
In the global market environment, the rapid rise of emerging markets, technology transfer and other issues have indeed brought a lot of impact to Japan’s manufacturing industry in recent years. But these impacts are not enough to make Japan’s manufacturing industry decline, but rather strengthen its ambition to stick to the high-quality product line. After all, the impact of cheap productivity and low-cost raw materials in China and other countries on Japan’s manufacturing industry can only stay in the fast-moving consumer goods market; in the technology-oriented and high-end durable goods market, the position of Japanese manufacturing is still difficult to shake. Think about the craze of going abroad or buying toilet lids and rice cookers overseas.
If you think what I saw is a single point case, let me list the recent situation of the well-known Japanese manufacturing giants.
One: Toshiba shuts down its “machine”
At the end of 2013, Toshiba closed its factory in Dalian after establishing a joint venture with Huizhou TCL Electric Appliance Sales Company, and all TVs in the china cnc machining and more market have been transferred to TCL for OEM production. Toshiba said that in the future, the group will focus its business on two directions: one is recyclable, clean, portable, high-efficiency and environmentally friendly energy products; the other is to cope with the ever-increasing storage products that record human history and nature – hard disks.
Second: Panasonic becomes “green”
In 2012, Panasonic sold its Sanyo white appliance business to domestic home appliance giant Haier for RMB 830 million, and announced that it would no longer invest in plasma and LCD display businesses. Japan’s Panasonic said that Panasonic’s senior management had already made an active transformation plan to transform from focusing on existing businesses to new energy and environmental protection fields.
Third: Sony becomes “medical”
Sony Corporation of Japan, which established the Sony Information Systems China headquarters in Dalian in April this year, acquired the Illinois Life Sciences Company in the United States as early as 2011 and began to get involved in the flow cytometry business. After working closely with Olympus in 2012, it attended the China International Medical Equipment Expo held in Shanghai in May this year with new products and solutions under the new theme of “Frontier Technology, Dedicated to Medical Care”. Sony’s leading scientific and technological achievements and strong strength in the medical field are fully demonstrated through surgical imaging mobile stations, surgical 3D solutions, endoscopic surgery solutions, etc.
Inspiration for Made in China
First: Combine trends such as Internet + and Industry 4.0 and actively seek change
It is said that “transformation is suicide, and not transforming is waiting for death”. We must understand that it is not transformation for the sake of transformation, but transformation for the sake of improving the global competitiveness of enterprises. The key is to form an advantageous business model and management method. The transformation of Japanese home appliance manufacturers is to transfer manufacturing and reduce costs while concentrating resources on emerging industries. Therefore, China’s manufacturing transformation should also take the initiative to adjust its industrial structure, and the leading industries will gradually shift from high-energy consumption, high-input, and low-efficiency traditional manufacturing industries to high-tech, deep-processing new manufacturing industries and emerging industries such as the electronic information industry to enhance product competitiveness.
Second: Focus on quality, craftsmanship and continuous innovation
The craftsmanship and perseverance of the Japanese are well known, which is also an important reason for the strength of Japan’s manufacturing industry. For China’s manufacturing industry, attaching importance to technical workers, building a common vision with technical workers, and practicing the spirit of craftsmanship can not only help build a more rigorous, skill-oriented, and more focused corporate culture, produce better quality products, but also enable technical workers to find self-identity in a highly industrialized and commercialized society, enhance the enthusiasm for independent research and innovation, and promote the optimization of manufacturing process and the improvement of product quality.
Third: Improve user experience and service capabilities
The key to the transformation of the manufacturing industry is actually the shift from “manufacturing” to “service industry” thinking. The original focus of the manufacturing industry was pre-sales trading services, and now the focus is on after-sales value-added services. The key to the manufacturing industry in the past was R&D and production capabilities, and the key in the future will be operations and user capabilities. For manufacturing companies in transition, they must understand that user experience is the key factor in the success or failure of a product. The core pursuit of China’s manufacturing industry is to make a warm and thoughtful product that users perceive.
Fourth: Focus, concentration, small and beautiful
The success of Japanese small and medium-sized enterprises is first due to a high degree of concentration. Many companies started in very inconspicuous fields. What is commendable is that they have been studying and improving for decades until they have achieved breakthroughs. In order to differentiate themselves from large enterprises, excellent small enterprises usually focus on high value-added, non-standard and customized products. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan has designated 17 specific basic manufacturing technologies, including mold technology, forging technology, power transmission technology, etc., which are all key technologies that affect the competitiveness of the rapid prototyping and manufacturing industry – all of which are in the hands of small and medium-sized enterprises.
In such small and medium-sized enterprises, the internal organization is generally simple and flat, without KPI. Entrepreneurs value harmonious interpersonal relationships more than complex management systems. It is precisely in such an environment that people’s potential is greatly exerted. It can be seen that industrial upgrading may be a process of deepening social division of labor and the continuous emergence of small but specialized, small but refined, and small but strong enterprises. For China’s manufacturing transformation, “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” should be encouraged. Successful small and medium-sized enterprises are good at communicating with customers, especially customers in different industries, and finding their own market gaps in the increasingly diversified needs; on the other hand, traditional manufacturing also needs to learn Internet team management and project management, and give their products and organizations a thorough transformation in the Internet + tide.
