Honda Case

Dichotomy: quality, costs and delivery

Managers think they need to make trade-offs between product quality, cost and delivery.

The Right-first-time principle is a better way to manage these dichotomies.

The Right-first-time principle focus on how to 'build in quality instead of 'test in quality'.

Dichotomy: Collectivist or individualist mode

(1960's) Honda had become well known for the collective decision-making. This is not really true. There was a joint board to talk about problem and solution and to prepare younger manager for the day the founders would retire. This means that the organizational structure promote collective decision making alongside the individualist.

In 1991 Nobuhiko Kawamoto introduced reforms which established a clear hierarchy. The management structure was reorganized with clear and direct lines of responsibility to the top management group.

What he was actually doing was adding individual responsibility into the existing framework.

In all these years the company reorganize a lot and the company switch from collectivism to individualism the whole time, so there it is not resolved.

Dichotomy: Horizontal- vertical

Honda refuses to accept static trade-offs and the rejection of any obligation to choose one pole or the other. They work individually as in groups. They want the best of both worlds.

Dichotomy: Japanese firm or Western firm

Differs in organizational structures, company cultures, labour relations, interfirm relationships, manufacturing systems, work organization or marketing strategies

Honda use some positive points from the Japanese model and injected so-called Western attributes into the way it functions.

Dichotomy: Replacing models or facelifts

The difference is that for replacing the whole design process starts from scratch with every component redesigned and the facelift in which only a small number of components are redesigned to give an older model a more modern image.

For Honda the difference was that for replacing models the components the driver can see are replaced and for facelifts the unseen components are changed.

Dichotomy: Productive efficiency and human dignity

Honda is experimenting to combine productive efficiency and human dignity.

Dichotomy: mass production and one-piece-flow production

The objective