Cultural influences on manufacturing strategy development and execution in Japanese automobile parts manufacturing facilities in the United States

The Japanese automotive parts manufacturing industry in North America has grown at a substantial rate over the past two decades. Much of this growth has been linearly related to the market growth of the Asian automobile manufacturers, commonly referred to as 'original equipment manufacturers' or 'OEM's' that they primarily supply. A large degree of the original success of these companies derives from manufacturing strategies developed in Japan in service to these same Asian automobile manufacturers. Many of these manufacturing strategies and control structures have become the focus of study over the past two decades. The majority of this research has been focused on the OEM's rather than the Japanese supply base that has arisen in North America to support such factories. The supply firms have often lacked the international exposure and resources of the OEM's and in turn have experienced difficulty in fully implementing manufacturing strategies and structures that have proved successful in their native countries.At issue in this research was the effectiveness of such firms in the United States to implement 'home-based' manufacturing strategies and the effectiveness of expatriate management structures to convey and implement the strategies and structures. This was accomplished with an analysis of Japanese-American auto parts suppliers in the United States and evaluating the presence and effectiveness of elements commonly found in firms executing effective manufacturing strategies. The intent of this investigative effort was to determine the cultural influences on manufacturing strategy implementation. The study demonstrated that there were clear indicators and characteristics that were associated with positive performance in the transplanted organizations studied. In addition, the study established that increased cultural influences on Japanese expatriated executives were associated with positive strategy implementation.