Essay on Philips Versus Matsushita: a New Century, a New Round

Established an internal design division reducing “time to market” for new products; cross-functional integration required for successful development of new products [Grant p 135].

Ohmeda’s current distribution system and sales organization is not well suited to implement Rountree’s new business strategy. The new corporate strategy calls for growth in high technology product lines and the current dealership channel is more suited to goods that require less education and information. In summary, the market trends combined with our changing corporate strategy will require Ohmeda to change the distribution channel and structure of the sales force. In the short run, this will require a transition period and an investment to reorganize Ohmeda’s sales force for long term growth. In the long run, we believe this consolidating market will be heavily specialist orientated. Due to these facts we recommend a dedicated

Stuart Daw should adopt the new Transaction Cost allocation mechanism, which will enable it to remain competitive in the large customer segment.

The performance of each company is different from time to time based on their two different international strategies. Philips, for instance, showed poor struggles between national organizations and product divisions since there was no centralized decision –making terminal. In the end, the national organizations held the power because they were in control of the assets. Being in control of assets, the national organizations had more influence on the management team. Also the lack of clarity between the two’s responsibilities did not allow Philips to function effectively as a whole. They did have one thing going for them though. Philips was able adapt to changing markets based on their localization strategy. They

However, as a new member with a new product, electronic product in North American market, the reputation is also an important attribute. Especially, quick delivery time is a key attribute for this company, due to the demand of quick delivery in all markets. Moreover, the manufacturing process of the new product, electronic product, on which our company will definitely focus, has a lot demands. Such as, technology, innovation and quick delivery time even the ability to make the product be the first one appearing in the market (other company, which is developing the same product, may become our competitive opponents). Especially, technology is predicted to play the most important role in the manufacturing process. On the other hand, the traditional cost system has a lot of limitations. Traditional costing system focuses on the cost reduction and the efficiency, particular the products with relatively few standardized components; Clifton, however, produces a wide range of airplane components. In addition, nonfinancial aspects of

We at ALMS Consulting Co. have been hired to analyze the way product lines and product managers are being evaluated at the Thomas J. Lipton, Incorporated (“Lipton” or the “Company”) entity. We will review the performance metrics utilized at the corporate level of Lipton, explain the current methodology utilized to evaluate the individual product lines, and then detail the benefits and potential downfalls of the methodology proposed by Don Logan. Finally, we will provide our own recommendations and opinions as to how

Philips strives to make the world healthier and more sustainable through innovation. Their goal is to improve the lives of 3 billion people a year by 2025. They also want to create a high quality work

(PFMA) Increased competition has lead to greater effort for developing new products in order to meet customers demand. Therefore a lot of money has been put into Research and Development strategies, stimulating technical progress in this industry. (Mars, 2003)

Paramount has become a market leader in global consumer products; but knows that innovation is vital to continue success. Paramount has used technology to create an innovative razor, but wants to make sure that it is positioned effectively.

Matsushita did this by closing its fax machine factory in Germany, and closing its microwave oven subsidiary and air-compressor factory in the U.S. Matsushita also asked for more than 10,000 Japanese employees in its manufacturing sector to retire early and all of these closed businesses and cancelled job positions were moved to China. Matsushita’s establishing of the new “brain” in China, or Matsushita Electric R&D Center in Beijing, China, was the company’s second largest of 16 R&D centers around the world. Matsushita’s chairman, Yoichi Morishita said “it was too difficult to explain everything about China to Japanese designers; to really make use of China’s special competitive advantages and to really meet Chinese customers’ demands, Matsushita decided to hand over its China-related development and research issues to local researchers and engineers.” Matsushita decided to localize material supplies and use as many Chinese suppliers as possible for its operations in China because there are several material distribution and trade centers in China that provide steel, paint, hardware, etc. all functioning with a mechanism similar to that of the polystyrene distribution and trade centers. The fourth fundamental change in Matsushita’s new supply chain, Stretch the distribution link, Matsushita selected TCL, the largest TV producer in China, as its strategic partner to stretch its supply chain to Chinese rural and inland markets. With

According to the reading, it is true that “When digital camera and camcorder first appeared on the market in the early 1900s, Sony only had a few competitors such as Canon and Olympus”(49). Thus, it cannot be denied that Sony can gained a competitve advantage by reducing price, thus Sony placed its production in China in order to reduce the product’s assembly and manufacturing. However, when more competitors came, this strategices cannot work very well under this new circumstance, because for high value-added products like digital camera and camcorder, company cannot just focus on the manufacturing cost and minizing cycle time is also attached great importance. The short produce life cycle requires the company has more flexiable supply chain, otherwise it will increase its inventory cost. Imagine that if Sony still placed its production in China,

Kirkham’s strategy was to integrate the different systems of each division into an “all-inclusive” product and also to involve all the divisions together with regards to product development, instead of letting each division be responsible for just products within that division. Mr. Donaldson chose Kathleen Quinn, Vice-President of R&D, to be responsible for coordinating the development of new products. This proved to be quite a challenging task considering that each managing director (of each division) still retained responsibility for the turnover and profitability of their respective decisions and also for the strategies to achieve the goals of their divisions. In addition, regardless of the trend of their customers in purchasing integrated systems, the majority of each division’s turnover came from the sale of stand-alone products.

The managers were also not trained properly and maintained a centralized management approach. An HMSI manager was quoted in the statement saying, “The Japanese do not understand the workers’ language.” Management failed to understand the ideas brought to them by workers, “could not understand the organizational working from the employees’ point of view.” It was said that the Japanese failed to give Indian managers enough power to solve problems. The Indian managers were production specialists, who had very little understanding of industrial relations issues.

In contrast to Philips, Matsushita’s success stems from highly efficient and centralized operations. Also unlike Philips, Matsushita’s numerous domestic retail outlets in Japan are ideal for the sale and distribution of their products and provide valuable market research opportunities and capabilities. Both the structure and culture at Matsushita encourage an entrepreneurial drive in their employees and divisions, as they compete for funds to develop new products, and extraordinary communication exists between the international operations and the home office in Japan.

Any organization¡¦s existence and the survival in the short and long run will mainly depend on the right people being at the right positions in the right numbers.