Matsushita (Panasonic) Case Study Analysis

General Description of the Company (Matsushita)

Matsushita is a great company based in Japan and known there as National and in the USA and other countries as Panasonic but Matsushita isn’t a commercial name for the company anywhere. The company is specialized in electronics and was established in the year 1920 and its growth was parallel to that economic growth of Japan which was rapid and distinguished and it witnessed its great economic success in the 1970s and the 1980s. The company was established on the traditional values of old Japan that the Confucius rules were forming them such as respect, loyalty, self denying and hard work. Panasonic corporation was the name that the company was referred to as in 2008 as a consequence of the company’s unity of all international brands. The company was first established by efforts of  Konosuke Matsushita who set the company’s management framework and divided it for  parts ruled by a headquarter and the parts were given rights of decision making. The company was a leading in its field competing with others such as Sony in producing electronics.  (Panasonic.aero, 2015)

The Central Issue of the Case

Before the war, Japanese companies used to employ workers who were considered a part of the business and workers at that time before 1960s considered the companies where they worked as a place they belong to and that work is a duty they have to do with love and respect. Workers in Matsushita did the best of efforts to provide the company with the best they could do through hard work and loyalty in spite of any other advantages that could be found in other companies as they felt the company as being their home. The company in return provided them with good salaries, rewards and other merits. Japanese values and tradition affected the way people worked then but within time and postwar workers were not following the same attitudes in work. The new generations followed different attitudes in work as they didn’t consider themselves parts of the business or so loyal but they only thought in money being given and they used to compare business chances in different companies which was a thing that affected Matsushita largely as employees turnover became a problem that bothered the company. The Western culture had a role to play within the thoughts of the new generation of workers and employees at Matsushita as in the 90s, young employees were more eager for being promoted fast to get higher salaries and were seeking better  opportunities in other places as loyalty and belonging to the business disappeared with the modern life needs. As tradition and values stopped being the main rule employees followed, Japanese companies tried to react to this by changing their strategies and study human resources trends in order to be able to deal with employees professionally and on evidence based practice. Companies were affected by the employees’ behavior as, for example, Matsushita encountered a problem of low business performance on the individuals’ level and on the organizational level as well. Old techniques used with human resources should have been replaced with new ones so the company assigned new managers with creative ideas in human resources management as they set plans to manage human resources according to the changes in the cultural image as this affected all practices in human resource management. 

The Goals of the Company

The company is working to achieve major goals on the business level and on the administrative level as these goals can enable the company to preserve its position n the Japanese market of electronics and internationally, the company has the following goals:

-Ensuring a revolutionary attitude within the workplace by assigning innovative and creative workforce.

-Coping with the new changes in culture and Japanese and world society in order not to be retarded.

-Restructuring the human resources of the company and restructuring management strategies in the company.

-Training the company’s employees on new business trends and new technologies and software engineering.

-Reaching a reality vision of all the company’s ambitions.

-Following more rational models of management in the company as these management models can raise the company’s chances to succeed.

-Reach high performance levels by having high performance employees.

-Being aware of growth drivers in order to keep competitive advantage levels.

-Encouraging creativity as a major principle that the business adopt with talented employees.

The constraints of the problem

There are major constraints of the problem such as the following constraints

1. Cultural change is a constraint of the problem that  Matsushita encountering as cultural changes were reflected on the workers’ attitudes, desires and needs that became difficult for the company to realize and respond to so these cultural changes resulted in a perplexed view of the company to its human resources who should be an asset for investment.

2.  Employees turnover is another constraint as the company faces it because it occurs when other rivals in the market plan to raise their salaries in order to attract the young creative employees so they quit or leave to these companies.

3. Old management systems of the company that are considered a burden on the company’s budget such as old payment systems, old lifetime employing systems, old retiring rewards and the lack of modern human resources practices that work against change achievement.

All the relevant alternatives

1. Setting a long term HRM plan

A long term plan is a good alternative for the current problem; it is based on making deep analysis and study for the company today and in the past and then choose new human resource management practices including new recruitment, reward and motivation practices that tend to change the company’s view for its human resources for an enough period of time such as five years or ten years for example. This plan should be comprehensive and covers all areas of human resources management especially ways of retaining the best employees and ways of decreasing the expenses of human resources to reduce their burden o the company. 

2. Setting a short term HRM plan

A short term human resources management plan is a good alternative for the company because this plan is performed in short time period and it includes the basic needs of the company and matching them with employees’ needs and studies the current capabilities of the companies and the best solutions which can currently be applied to solve human resources problems. (Laursen and Foss, 2000).

The best alternative for the problem (Short term plans)

This problem can be solved by the best alternative which is following short term plans that are continuously changed as this plan depend on making modifications in the current HRM practices to make them coping with the new business and human resources needs and to be matched with new technologies that are changed daily and also changes which are not known but may happen to employee’s behaviors. This plan should focus on employees’ behaviors as a major motive for the company to apply the plan which is soon showing its effectiveness and whether they are useful for the business or not. Matsushita can find some managers who are well trained and are able to make quick decisions correctly and to attract new genius employees to the business and focus on those employees’ retention and not others as those genius can bring more profits for the company and achieve its organizational goals. The plans should be changed after being applied on their terms and changing should be radically and completely in order to cope with cultural and social changes and changes in the business market as well.  According to Ma, (2014), human resources management can be best applied by short term plans that tend to make quick changes to save the business from loss and disasters as these plans has genius solutions for problems of HRM in the current time as low performance employees shouldn’t stay in the work as they should be retired and new employees who are recruited on new conditions and new intelligent contracts can provide better suggestions for the company. A company such as Matsushita can depend on multiple short term plans that are changed from time to time according to the needs of the job and according to the employees behaviors in business as they can be motivated to change their passive business behaviors and follow new creative business behaviors.(Garg, 2015).

An implementation plan

Matsushita can implement a plan for solving the human resources problems that may lead to poor performance of the whole organizations as this implementing plan depends on the most appropriate alternative suggested. The plan should be based on setting main goals to be achieved such as making a general view of the company, its HRM practices and its position in the market, making good manager employee relationships that enable managers to understand employees’ behaviors and needs, use the best fastest ways to reach competitive advantage and following new HRM practices that are evidence based to be effective with companies that have similar activity as Matsushita.   

Stakeholders

All stakeholders should be identified in the plan such as employees, managers, owners and customers as roles of all of them should be clear and they should all be studied according to the benefits they can get from the implementation plan.

Assessment and Evaluation 

Assessment and evaluation are two main elements that an implementation plan should focus on as they are important to know if the plan was well applied and if it is effective and what future actions should be done in the next short term plans. Assessment and evaluation should also identify the future areas that will be addressed by business managers to raise the effectiveness of employees.

Custom Models Case -Tom and Manson Miller.

Introduction

Custom Models is a company specialized in plastic molds production, founded by Tom and Mason Miller in 1987. The main activity of the company is the manufacture of custom molds used for making plastic parts. The company also produces high quality plastic connectors incorporate in electronic devices. The company operates to provide electronic connectors producers with state-of-the-art customized molds that are manufactured closely according to each customer standards and requirements. Having good reputation in molds design and fabrication, the company management decided to expand its business to manufacture plastic parts, which led the necessity to change current strategies in order to handle the demand level and quality control requirements.

Analysis

Tom and Mason Miller, the father-and-son-team of the company, faced the problem of adopting new strategies to meet the change in order requirements, regarding time schedules, quality control and so forth. Regarding demand fluctuations, electronics producers attempted to sign agreements with their suppliers to ensure strict delivery of raw materials provided that the received materials must be both cheap and of high quality. Therefore, Custom Molds Company increased its production of custom molds which required extra work load and full rearrangement of the plant layout. With the expansion in production, the company increased its molding equipments and ingredient mixing facilities in order to be the leading supplier of plastic molds by the mid 1990’s. Therefore, the company became involved in two manufacturing processes: plastic parts production and fabricating molds. The increase in work load in Custom Molds led to reduced performance level. The company received tons of negative feedback regarding its incapacity to meet delivery promises. Furthermore, the large-scale production raised the number of defective products which increased customers’ complaints regarding production quality. In order to achieve its objective and become the leading molds supplier, Custom Molds has to rearrange its manufacturing processes and adopt time management techniques; this can help meet demand while keep production quality level. Furthermore, the company has to evaluate its market and identify priorities regarding quality control and mass production based on marketplace fluctuations and decide where to focus its efforts, either on fabricating molds or manufacturing plastic parts.

Conclusion

Custom Molds is a supplier for plastic molds for electronics manufacturers; lately, the company expanded its activities to include the manufacturing of plastic parts, in addition to molds injection activities. As a result, the demand for the company production increased which implies the expansion in manufacturing processes, increasing work load and rearrangement of current strategy to meet the new demand level. The company faced the problem of increased complaints regarding mediocre quality of products and delayed delivery. In order to solve this problem, the company must change its production policy and prepare new effective and proactive policy that considers the fulfillment of four main aspects: profitability, quality control, timeliness and cost effectiveness.

Organizing your own business

Introduction

Different entrepreneurs are willing to start their own business and define a specific market segment to which their business will belong. However, a lot of people are not clear on defining their goals and objectives that will guide their business strategy. Most entrepreneurs consider profitability as the main target they wish to reach; over the long-term, their objectives and goals can be extended to include gaining competitive advantage and being distinguish than other competitors and rivals in the same market. Nevertheless, having your own business enables you to work independently, you will not need to work for somebody else but yourself. Running your own business will let you set your own rules and guidance that can better be suitable to your goals and objectives. In this paper we will discuss the idea of owning a business and being the leader of a certain number of employees; we will evaluate different types of business organizations in order to identify which one is more appropriate to our business. We will identify and explain different factors to be considered in selecting our business and how many employees we need to hire in our business to achieve success in the marketplace.

How to Organize a Personal Business

The first thing anyone needs to do in order to run his own business is to identify different opportunities available in the marketplace and threats that can be challenging and requires him/her to perform certain efforts to achieve market success. The type of business we will choose here is a fast food restaurant. Opening your own fast food restaurant implies that you must have a staff made up of more than eight employees in the first place. Fast food business model requires great efforts to be achieved from different workforce sectors. You will need to hire, for instance, at least two chiefs, three or four waiters and two delivery workers. An entrepreneur who desires to run his own fast food restaurant will have two choices in front of him, either to acquire a fast food franchise, such as KFC or McDonald's, or to own a brand new fast food restaurant. Once you define your choice you will need to organize your business structure by setting a suitable business plan that better identify types of food to be served, appliances and equipments needed, workforce activities and duties, salaries and wages system, different menus, accounting application and so forth. You can offer hot and cold drinks, fresh or canned food, these factors can make your brand food more distinguished and differentiated than your rivals in the market.

Different Types of Business Organizations

For any startup business, it is critical to consider available types of business organization in your country or area and identify which form of business organization is most appropriate to you market segment, business type and location of your business. Organizational types of business can differentiate between three main types, sole proprietorship, partnership, and corporation. Each type has its own features, pros and cons that make it suitable to different types of business. When choosing the appropriate type of business organization, an entrepreneur needs to consider different factors, such as financial concerns, legal issues and governmental policies, taxation and other financing and personal concerns.

The sole proprietorship type of business organization grants a single owner the full power to run the business solely. It is easy to form or dissolve your business as you are the single owner. It grants the entrepreneur unlimited liability in handling different issues, regarding to choose the types of products and services to be offered, staff members, and different organizational structure components. However, in most cases, businesses that adopt a sole proprietorship type are more vulnerable to fold in a limited time if the owner failed to continue running the business because of death or any similar reason for instance. The second type is partnership, this type implies that two or more individuals run and own the business together, it is and easy to form type of business organization, it is distinguished from the former type in imposing a certain number of regulations to rule different activities of different owners. However, potential conflicts among the owners can raise the possibility of dissolving the partnership and fold the business. The third and last type is corporation, it is the dominant type followed in large companies as it is characterized by unlimited commercial life, ease of ownership transition and greater flexibility in capital rising by selling common or preferred stocks. However, corporations are subject to regulatory restrictions, and require large operational and organizational costs because of the double taxation and other administrative expenses. For the type of business we focus on in our paper, fast food restaurant, the suitable type of business organization will be the partnership, because it is more flexible in management issues than corporations and less risky to fold or dissolved than sole proprietorships.

Factors to Be Considered In Selecting Your Form of Business

When making a decision regarding the type of business organization, an entrepreneur requires considering a certain number of factors that affects how to run and organize his business structure properly.

• Future requirements: you can determine the needs and requirements of your business on the short run, but it is difficult to identify your long term requirements in terms of employees, financing resources, system of accounting, workforce activities, new product lines and other similar requirements, unless you adopt a long term oriented strategy.
• Capital requirements: how much you need to finance your new business reflects the way to attract potential investments to your business. To raise capital, you can create a well-defined business plan to present to your investors; such business plan must include information on business type, and products or services provided.
• Location: the area you choose for your business can affect the organizational form you will adopt in your business. If your business will be in one of the Gulf countries, or in the Middle East, for instance, you better adopt a partnership form of organization in the short run, and then you can expand your business to a corporation in the long run.
• Healthcare issues: you must confirm your commitment to different rules and regulations imposed by the government in terms of health codes and provide all necessary licenses that guarantee the level of commitment your business achieve towards healthcare issues.

Terms and Conditions Regulating Your Business

Before you open your own fast food restaurant, you need to define the number of owners, in the case you follow a partnership; the number of owners can be three or four owners. Certain other rules must be considered in your contract that will govern the relationship between you and the rest of the owners. Such rules must cover the following issues:

• Number of employees and hiring priorities
• Products and services provided and different product lines
• Schedules and time plan to be committed by different workforce members
• Budgeting issues and cost effectiveness principle
• Profitability levels and market segmentation issues

Conclusion

In this paper, we discussed the idea of owning a new business and we identify the business we wish to own as a fast food restaurant. We identified different factors affecting this type of businesses and concluded that partnership is the best form of business organization that is most suitable to open a fast food restaurant. We figured our that an entrepreneur can choose between franchising or opening a new business brand for his own, and we referred to different factors that can affect the type of business we will open. We finally illustrated the number of owners who can share business ownership and different terms and conditions that can regulate the way they can run their business and relationships among them.

Enhancing the competitive strategy Toyota

Toyota’s best competitive strategy

Toyota’s best competitive tool is to use both differentiation and low cost as generic strategies to try and gain a competitive advantage over their competitors in the automotive industry. In order to achieve this, Toyota has to differentiate on several levels form their competitors. First of all, Toyota for long time has been very successful in differentiating on the basis of superior design and quality. This has led to Toyota being able to create a brand image that is very strong and one that brings to mind quality, long lasting cars when a potential customer sees it. The strength of Toyota’s brand image will be seen in few coming years with the recalls and problems Toyota faced in dealing with the recalls. Toyota is able to survive these problems because they had such a long and proven track record of quality and superior.  Another area that Toyota differentiates should be in technology. As mentioned before, Toyota was the first successful mass produce the hybrid car on the market when it released the Prius in 2003. Being the first to get their hybrid on the market allowed Toyota to gain a large portion of the market share in the area of hybrid cars.

Along with differentiation Toyota also needs to use low cost to try and gain a competitive advantage in the automotive industry. Toyota has to be the lowest cost producer in the industry. This will lead Toyota to achieve its cost leadership strategy by adopting lean production, careful choice and control of suppliers, efficient distribution, and low servicing costs from a quality product.

 Supplemental strategies (enhancement of R&D)

As mentioned previously, Toyota is the low cost leader in their industry. It is suggested that Toyota has focused too much on low cost, losing market share and their market positioning of superior design and quality. For Toyota, the biggest thing they need to do is make sure that their low cost strategy does not compromise their superior design and quality.

Due to the recent safety recalls Toyota has been temporarily de-railed from their strategy. It needs to get back on track and re-focused and make sure that they concentrate on what made them unique. In order to make this happen, managers of Toyota should focus on company communication and bringing back its former foundation of making quality cars that are dependable and reliable in addition to modern. The company found its weak spot when it came to the way the company responded to the recalls. In the beginning of the recall era, Toyota was very slow in its response. Finally, Toyota executives made the call to recall more than five million of its own vehicles due to numerous different issues. Therefore it is suggested to halt all sales of Toyota vehicles as well until the problem is addressed. For a car company, this is a huge deal and one that will affect the balance sheets for years to come. However, Toyota seemed slow in finding a solution to its problems. With a huge recall and halt in sales, the management should push for day and night research, product development, and problem solving in order to get their product back on the market.

Strategy for foreign markets

The forward-looking of Toyota expansion plan to foreign market is not guarantees of future performance and involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Toyota’s actual results and performance under risk of revenue lost. These factors include changes in economic conditions affecting, and the competitive environment in, the automotive markets in Japan, North America, Europe and other markets in which Toyota operates and fluctuations in currency exchange rates, particularly with respect to the value of the Japanese yen, the U.S. dollar, the euro and the British pound as well.

The main weapons are low-cost cars for Toyota to make another step towards conquering global automotive market especially in USA, Europe, Russia and China. In this regards, Toyota has to build three new factories that produce over 450,000 units annually in order to meet market demand in India and China. The plans in Japan are to predict the expansion on the emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, India and China. Toyota has to continue on the elasticity of these markets, which is the key to success for increasing their sales significantly. The main objective is the Chinese market. China currently registered the highest rate of economic growth and the automotive segment is a very large expansion, which makes Toyota to hurry to take over the control of this market. The product strategy of Toyota should focus on the high quality, on developing new innovative technologies, focusing on further research and creativity.

Adopting a global strategy based on the product policy, research and continuous quality improvement, technological innovation, but also respect for consumers around the world, all of these will enable Toyota Motors Company to conquer the whole world.

framework for executing strategy

General Electric Company vision statement:

"Creating good things for customers and environment-friendly"

Plan to communicate:

-           with stakeholders:

Through effective communication with all staff of General Electric Company to clarify the basic elements of vision as well as this communication should be repeatedly to increase staff awareness and their acceptance of the vision and the followers of director's behaviors consistent with the company's vision and this will create faith with the employee of the importance of vision.¹

Plan to communicate:

-           with shareholders:

The report should include all annual financial statements of the company and clearly in accordance with the accounting standards to clarify the amounts that required achieving this vision and do not forget the company must post shareholders, employees in decision-making.²

General Electric financial objectives:

Allocation of $ 10 billion U.S. dollars to launch eco-friendly products and building global capacity over the next few years, five to develop this aspect:

This will lead to the growth of the company's revenues increased by 40 billion dollars annually through an increase in the company's sales by 20 % annually over the next 5 years, and this requires investments in infrastructure to create new customers for the company and the support of acquisitions and this is an effective means of capital for the growth of the company and back again to about 20 billion dollars of profits.³

 Our goal is to get these profits and invest in infrastructure. We expect an increase in the growth areas in the areas of growth in Japan, China and the Middle East increased by 12% from the previous year. In several areas such as health care, oil, gas and aviation through the application of this new technology while maintaining our existing customers.

Asset performance will be improved by 1% and this could add 20 billion dollars in profits each year and this means that small changes big results.

Will orphaned evaluate our performance on an annual basis in order to achieve long-term success in achieving a balance between debt and equity to keep the average cost low while maintaining sufficient flexibility to meet the obligations of the company's financial and company will try to keep the ratio of ordinary shares to maintain sufficient cash flow to maintain the credit rating of investment grade and allow access to long-term capital at interest rates attractive.

Expected financial objectives for 2013-2017

 (In $ billions)

Operating EPS	1.83+
Industrial profit margin (%)	17.6+
Industrial segment profits	35
Cash returned to investors	22+

General Electric strategic intent:

Repayment of approximately 15 billion, which is a support received by the company during the financial crisis in 2008⁴. Application of this product will expand the presence of the company in the oil and gas sector due to the strong growth of this sector, where currently represents 12% of the company's revenues, and the sector is the fourth largest company in terms of revenue.⁵