Knowledge Works : Managing Intellectual Capital at Toshiba (Japan Business and Economics Series)
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
This book describes why, for the past twenty-five years, Japanese productivity has been growing more rapidly than productivity in the U.S. Unlike other books on the subject of the Japanese success in manufacturing, it looks at what actually happens in factories. The author brings his
experience of working at the Yanagicho Works of the Toshiba Corporation, in Kawasaki City. Like so many Japanese factories, this one is highly productive, efficient, and flexible. While the factory is ordinary looking on the outside, its workers are anything but ordinary as they constantly strive to
improve the way they work and the quality of the products they produce. The key to this is the continuous creation and application of knowledge throughout the factory, from workers on the shop floor, to research and development engineers, to top management. Fruin explains how Japanese culture and
religion prepare workers for their role in this process of creating and disseminating knowledge.
Card catalog description
For the past twenty-five years, Japanese industrial productivity has been growing more rapidly than productivity in the U.S. By presenting a close-up look at a factory in Japan that is typical of what the author calls "Knowledge Works," this book provides insight into Japanese success in manufacturing. W. Mark Fruin draws on five year's study of Toshiba and other leading Japanese industrials, and more than a year's participative field work at Yanagicho Works of the Toshiba Corporation, in Kawasaki City, where he wore the Toshiba uniform, worked on the line, studied the development of the SuperSmart card, and sat in the Manufacturing Engineering and Human Resources Training Departments. Like so many Japanese factories, Yanagicho Works is highly productive, efficient, and flexible, and staffed by workers who constantly strive to improve the way they work and the quality of the products they produce. The key to this success, Fruin explains, is the continuous creation and application of knowledge throughout the whole factory complex, from the assembly workers to top management, a process facilitated from the start by Japanese culture and history.
Knowledge Works : Managing Intellectual Capital at Toshiba (Japan Business and Economics Series),W. Mark Fruin,Oxford University Press, USA,0195081951,Business / Economics / Finance,Business/Economics,Case studies,High technology industries,Industrial Technology,Industries - General,Information Management,Information resources management,International - General,Japan,Management - General,Organization Development,Organizational learning,Productivity (Industrial Economics),Technology,Toshiba, Kabushiki Kaisha,Business & Economics / International,Business & Management,Business | Management,Cultural studies,Industry & Industrial Studies,Work & labour
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