Japanese Manufacturing Methods at U.S. Manufacturing Plants: Empirical Evidence

Some Japanese manufacturing industries, such as the auto, electronics and machinery industries, achieved high levels of international competitiveness in the 1980s. Consequently their manufacturing and business practices attracted the attention of North American manufacturers (Nakamura and Vertinsky 1994). It is possible that firms' difficulties in dealing with ex-ternal market related problems and associated legal restrictions over which firms have little control have prevented certain Japanese business practices, such as supplier-manufacturer relationships and corporate control practices, from being adopted by many North American firms to a significant degree. On the other hand U.S. manufacturing firms do have control over their production methods and, to a lesser degree, the industrial relations on their own shop floors. It is Japanese business practices in these areas that U.S. manufacturing firms spent substantial amounts of resources to transplant to their U.S. operations in the 1980s. There is considerable anecdotal evidence that transfer of Japanese production methods has had significant impacts on the performance of U.S. manufacturing plants (e.g. Krafcik 1988). There is, however, relatively little empirical evidence based on a broad sample of plants and workers. The purpose of this paper is to fill in this gap in the literature.