| In Japan, automobile industry is integrated industry which is closely related to production, sales, maintenance, transportation industry and the industry alike. As one of the pillar industries of Japan's economy, automobile industry plays an important role. Over the years, on basis of the principle "innovation", Japanese auto industry has caught up with those of American and European developed countries though they are extremely short of resources and energy. As the biggest carmaker in Japan, Toyota Motor Corporation is not only the leader of Japanese manufacturing industry, but today's outstanding of world automobile industry. In 2008, Toyota changed the dominance of GM in the world's automobile industry that it had maintained for up to 77 years and successfully climbed up to the top spot. Since 2002, Toyota has remained top 9 of world's top 500 for eight consecutive years. In 2010, based on revenue of 2041.06 billion, profits of 22.56 billion U.S. dollars, Toyota even ranked the fifth place. Toyota's success is not accidental, in addition to government's supports, it can not do without its innovative activities. Since the collapse of the bubble economy, many Japanese manufacturing companies went into a vicious cycle of operating deficit, while Toyota was still able to survive and continued to create more miracles. The reason is that its systematic innovation mechanism ensures the vitality of the corporation. Now, Toyota is accelerating its pace of overseas expansion by means of its unique "Toyota Production System". However, the road to happiness is full of hardships. In 2010, Toyota's global recall made itself caught in the credit crisis, which shows that Toyota has gradually deviated from normal orbit of "Toyota Production System", resulting in imbalance of size, cost and quality while accelerating expansion of overseas markets and deploying global strategies. Toyota recall is not the case, but has sounded the alarm for domestic auto manufacturers. Research on Toyota business Innovation can provide a useful reference to the development and innovation of China's automobile industry.First, this paper reviews the Theory of Innovation. Second it discusses the overall development of Japanese auto industry, analyzes the competitive advantages and explore the main reason for obtaining these competitive advantages. Government's industrial policy contributes greatly to the development of Japanese automobile industry, but the source of the success comes from a series of innovative activities conducted by auto manufacturers because of competition. Furthermore, this paper takes Japanese auto industry's leader——Toyota for example under the background of Japanese auto industry, making a specific analysis of Toyota business innovation process in terms of technology and mode of production, and then summarizes the success of Toyota's innovation. As for technology, the bright spot of Toyota's innovation is that the study of foreign production technology is not just imitation, but innovation on basis of introduction and imitation. Therefore, it can create its own brands. As for mode of production, the important reason for difficultly imitating and surpassing Toyota's production method lies in the truth that Toyota Production System is by no means a comprehensive copy of Ford's production method, because it complies with the conditions in Japan, which is the localized production system. This paper summarizes successful experience of Toyota's innovation, at the same time, it also points out shortcomings existed in the process. Auto recall in 2010 has been the biggest recall crisis suffered by Toyota since its first introduction of automobile recall system in 1969. From this incident, the paper concludes that innovation mechanism is an internal operating mechanism for sustainable development of enterprises, and innovation itself has certain regularities. Those who violate the law must be punished. Finally, throughout Toyota's entire innovation process, the paper makes recommendations for the innovation and development of Chinese auto companies. First of all, the government should strengthen the policy support to create a good environment for the development of automobile industry. Secondly, domestic automobile enterprise should strengthen innovation to enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises, focusing on the development of new energy technology, parts and components production technology. Finally, besides the way that integrating domestic automobile enterprises for mergers and reorganizations, domestic auto manufacturers can also expand the scale by strengthening close cooperation with multinational automobile enterprises including parts suppliers in order to learn advanced technology and methods of production.This paper has been adhering to but not rigidly to the previous research. It takes Theory of Innovation as a guide ingeniously, and then studies Toyota's business innovation. Previous research are often limited to the micro-enterprise level, however, this dissertation places Toyota's business innovation research under the context of Japanese auto industry, and the research is linked with the whole environment of Japan's economic development. Secondly, this paper puts forward a balanced view that the "innovation portfolio" is the key to Toyota's successful innovation. Most of previous studies focus on Toyota Production System, but this time the article involves technology innovation with creativity, making the whole research more comprehensive. Of course, the paper also has shortcomings. Due to the limits of objective conditions and my ability, it is inevitable for this paper to have omissions or errors during the discussion. Second, based on space consideration, Toyota's overseas operation, internal governance and other aspects has not been mentioned in the paper, which will be the important areas for further study. |
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