Question:
Discuss about the Intergrating Technology in Business Organizations.
Toyota Motor Corporation is an international business that specializes on the manufacture, production and sale of automotive appliances. It is actually Japanese multinational automotive company in the automotive industry whose headquarters are based Aichi, Japan. The company operates in more than 26 countries in the world with over 50 stores or rather locations overseas (Nkomo, 2013). From history, Toyota is the world’s largest and oldest automotive manufacturer, besides being listed in the top ten companies in relation to revenue earned per year. Being a multinational company, Toyota has employed more than 340, 000 skilled, experienced and knowledgeable employees all over the world. Since when it was started back in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda, the company has been increasing and improving its performance and productivity year after year (New, 2007). Toyota has been named as one of the top most ranked companies that have manufactured the most number of cars since they were commenced. The vehicles of the company are sold in over 170 countries in the world.
General Motors Company, also known as the GM is a multinational company that operates from Detroit, Michigan, US. The company was founded in 1908 by William C. Durant. GM Company specializes on the production and manufacture of automotive appliances which it sells all over the world(Twarowska and K?kol, 2013). In addition to manufacturing, the company also designs, markets and distributes both vehicle spare parts and vehicles themselves. The business operates in most of the technologically developed countries like in China Russia, Pakistan, India and USA. The company is currently listed as one of the largest developing automotive businesses in the world especially after being termed as the largest automotive manufacture in the world from 1931-2007. For the company to stay as on going, it has always been updated when it comes to technology usage and advancement (Chibafa, 2016). GM’s product quality improves when the technology is improved.
Besides relying on the technology to manufacture their products, the companies also concentrates on ensuring that their corporate governance, management team, marketing operations, sales techniques, advertising and the actual manufacturing processes are also effective(Gawer, 2014). However, in this modern technological world, most businesses are currently relying on the technology to conduct most of their business operations, including making sales, procurement, marketing and advertising, production processes, management, communication to name just but a few (Gaimon et al, 2017). Therefore, Toyota and GM being global businesseshave always made use of the technology to perform these operations. In this assignment, the research will focus on discussing various major business aspects that global organizations like Toyota and GM have in common and the differences between the two in relation to these aspects.
As for Toyota Company, it is clear that over the last decades, the company has grown and developed to become one of the best and largest automotive companies in the world. Apparently, it beat General Motors back in 2008 after General Motors failure in the industry. Toyota operates in a global scale operations whereby it has factories, assembling stores, selling markets and manufacturing locations in most parts of the world (Robbins et al, 2013), e.g. Australia, Sri Lanka, India, Canada, Indonesia, South Africa, Poland, France, Brazil, United Kingdom to name just but a few. For this reason, the company has concentrated on ensuring the continuous of its growth and development pattern by working on different strategies that can help it maintain its position in the global market and its revenue levels among other things (Ichijo and Kohlbacher, 2007). The globalization strategies used by the company mostly originate from the Japanese specialists that have access and experience in analyzing and evaluating global markets especially in the automobile industry.
Apparently, Toyota Motors uses the KAIZEN strategy whose principles focuses on product quality improvement and development. The strategy is an integrative strategy which means that it has many roles and functions to play in a business’s operations. Apparently, in this case, the strategy focuses on ensuring that there is gradual improvement, management and continuous business activities and procedures whose function and responsibility is to improve quality, productivity and competitiveness of a product/service produced by the company (Wang et al, 2016). The strategy basically focuses on ensuring that the products are of high and best quality by involving new technology in the manufacturing process. KAIZEN strategy in Toyota Company has played a major role in ensuring increased research and development by use of innovative technology with the aim of improving the company’s production methods and many other operations like sales, marketing, assembling, advertising among others(Audenino, 2012). With the strategy, the company is always able to maneuver in the global economic environment, achieve global production and sales and attracted more customers than other automotive companies simply because of the quality of the product it produces.
To be the world’s most recognized and popular automotive company, Toyota focuses on developing and improving the resources that it uses to manufacture its products. As an automotive company, Toyota relies heavily on technology development and advancement (Stacks and Ulmer, 2009). On the other hand, it is important to note that with the current world, the technology advancement is becoming a drastic and frequent operation that causes immense positive impacts to the world. This means that, the company’s resources become well equipped, available and effective for their purpose especially in the lean production brought about by the developed technology (Stacks and Ulmer, 2009). The company manufactures its products with the use of technology which is now evolving (Gawer, 2014). Recently, Toyota has started manufacturing electric cars which require much better and improved technology. The company has also been concentrating on improving the ITS technology that was introduced in vehicles. However much the company values technology development, it also values the modernization and revolution that is being brought about by the automotive companies in the world. According to Pil and Fujimoto, 2007, the company’s lean and reflective manufacturing processes have and will always be based on the technology development levels.
Toyota is an extremely large company that operates in almost all parts of the world. This means that its marketing operations should certainly be well managed and controlled for Toyota to maintain its leading position in the world. The company’s product brands are famous and popular in most parts of the world. However, the competition from companies like GM has forced Toyota to increase and improve its marketing techniques into methods that can be effective and efficient for the company at large. In that case, the company has always utilized the nature of technology development into achieving its marketing objectives. The company has conducted its promotions, advertisements and marketing operations in the internet or rather social media networks like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, goggle among others. The company has pages on all of these sites and many others where it is able to communicate with and to its customers when need be. Through these sites, the company is able all its markets, employees, managers and customers around the world.
The organization technology is entirely related to the use of technology in ensuring effective and efficient organizational structure in a business. Toyota Company uses an organizational structure that is capable of affecting its technology innovation status (Loyd, 2016). The organizational structure is focused on ensuring effective and efficient production of the products. The company’s structure is effectively coordinated by the top management team headed by a number of company presidents (Sosnovskikh, 2016). The roles and responsibilities allocated to each employee are specifically allocated according to the employee’s skills, expertise, experience and knowledge of the field (Robbins et al, 2013). Therefore, this means that in case of manufacturing (which is done by the IT department experts, then the company and employees does their best to ensure product production and quality standard achievement.
Being an international company, General Motors has to focus on its customer base, product brand and name, business name and other aspects that contribute to improving a business’s value in the global market. The company takes a different turn when it focuses on its operations besides its customer base which is largest in US followed by China, Brazil, UK, Canada, Russia and Germany. The company uses a strategy that is currently being used by most motor companies (Twarowska and K?kol, 2013). The company uses the strategy whose product creation and manufacture focuses entirely on the global market and not a specific single market. Traditionally, GM used to use the developing countries as dumping sites for second hand or rather used cars. The company focused only on producing new cars for the already developed countries therefore being attributed to consumer discrimination. However, the company decided years back that it should concentrate on ensuring that it has a large market share and segment in the global market by considering every type of customer (Goussak et al, 2012). Also, for the last few years, the company has implemented some majorly important techniques to improve its overall operations, especially those that relate to product quality, growth, development and recognition, i.e. lead in production and technology, grow its product brand and line, grow its markets world-wide and ensure efficient operations.
General Motors Company designs, builds and sells cars, trucks, buses, car spare parts and other automobile appliances. The company develops, manufactures and assembles the vehicles to sell in its international market whose competition levels are extremely high and close. However, to beat its competition, GM has focused on specialization of its 12 product brands which are: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Holden and Opel among others. The company has been focusing on improving its production volumes and product quality by focusing fully on improving its overall performance. The company’s through put performance can however, be increased by improving and developing the product designs and operations relating to product manufacture (T. Rosell et al, 2014).This is only possible with technology advancement and modern technology implementation. Therefore, the company has always made use of its manufacturing technology by managing and controlling activities and procedures in its three major manufacturing related areas:
It develops an algorithm that estimates the throughput performance by use of modern technology, pointing out system and operation bottlenecks and estimating buffer allocation (Bayou and De Korvin, 2008).
Installation of real-time plant-floor-data-collecting systems that help support the algorithm system
Created and developed a common process for identifying manufacturing opportunities and implementing performance improvements.
Through these three activities in the manufacturing department, the company has been able to increase its product volumes, increase product quality and increase revenues eventually (Chang et al, 2008).
Just like any other growing and expanding international business enterprise, General motors is has also adopted the use of the improved technology to conduct its sales and marketing operations. The company has always relied on technology development to perform its business operations. However, because of the recent high rates of technology development the company’s marketing and advertising operations are made easier as well as more effective (Akamatsu et al, 2014). The emergence of increased social media use by the customers to view products, conduct product purchases, conduct product reviews and communicate to and with business organizations has affected automotive companies and led them into adopting these strategies. General Motors therefore uses the internet and other social networking sites to make its sales, conduct product promotions, marketing operations, product advertisements, general information sharing and updating to the consumers among other things. In addition to that, the company has also created its own websites and pages in the internet and the social media platforms like in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. The aim is either to penetrate different markets or expand its market.
An organizational structure of a company can be adversely affected by a business’s technology use. General Motors is headed by a board of directors, which is headed by the chairman and then the CEO, the Presidents, Vice presidents, other managers and then the employees respectively (Akamatsu et al, 2013). The structure is effective in such a way that the company’s business operations are effective and efficient at the end of each day. The management team makes decisions that relate to every business aspects including technology advancement and usage. Therefore, ii is important to note that, the company’s management team has always focused on choosing the best technology to be used in the business simply because its entire operations rely completely on technology advancement and status. Additionally, the company has also relied on technology to coordinate, supervise and allocate roles and responsibilities in the organization which makes it more effective than anything else in the company.
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TOYOTA CMPANY |
GENERAL MOTORS COMPANY |
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Its global strategy focuses on the general business improvement but mostly on the increase and improvement of product quality which determines the value of the product by the customer hence determine market share and segment |
Focuses on improving its customer base (market share and segment) by changing its product focus to target every/any customer at any and every level. i.e. improving its focus on the developing countries’ markets as well rather than the developed countries only |
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Main purpose is to use modern technology to improve product quality. |
Manufacturing operation aims at improving its overall business operations, its production volume and quality and production methods. |
Conclusion
Toyota Motors and General Motors Companies are some of the world’s best and largest automobile producers and sellers. The companies have contributed immensely to society and economic prosperity by manufacturing and selling of automobile appliance and spare parts. The companies have maintained their position in the automobile global market by focusing on the use of the best, effective and efficient global strategies, manufacturing techniques and strategies, marketing strategies and organizational structures. However, all of these business aspects in these companies have been greatly affected and caused by technology which means that in case the technology improves, these aspects improve as well. In that case, I can say that technology is basically a major part of these companies’ operations and performance in the global market.
References
Audenino, A., 2012, December. Kaizen and Lean management autonomy and self-orientation, potentiality and reality…. In Communications, Computing and Control Applications (CCCA), 2012 2nd International Conference on (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Akamatsu, M., Green, P. and Bengler, K., 2013. Automotive technology and human factors research: Past, present, and future. International journal of vehicular technology, 2013.
Bayou, M.E. and De Korvin, A., 2008. Measuring the leanness of manufacturing systems—a case study of Ford Motor Company and General Motors. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 25(4), pp.287-304.
Chang, Q., Ni, J., Bandyopadhyay, P., Biller, S. and Xiao, G., 2007. Supervisory factory control based on real-time production feedback. Journal of manufacturing science and engineering, 129(3), pp.653-660.
Chibafa, A., 2016. Impact of multi-nationality on the value creation of publicly listed companies (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pretoria).
Gaimon, C., Hora, M. and Ramachandran, K., 2017. Towards Building Multidisciplinary Knowledge on Management of Technology: An Introduction to the Special Issue. Production and Operations Management, 26(4), pp.567-578.
Gawer, A., 2014. Bridging differing perspectives on technological platforms: Toward an integrative framework. Research Policy, 43(7), pp.1239-1249.
Goussak, G.W., Webber, J.K. and Ser, E.M., 2012. A Critical Needs Plan for General Motors: A Cultural Pluralism Approach.
Ichijo, K. and Kohlbacher, F., 2007. The Toyota way of global knowledge creation the’learn local, act global’strategy. International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management, 7(2-3), pp.116-134.
Loyd, N., 2016. Empirical Study of Toyota Motor Corporation Relative to the Good to Great Framework. Journal of Management Research, 8(3), pp.15-30.
New, S.J., 2007. Celebrating the enigma: the continuing puzzle of the Toyota Production System.
Nkomo, T., 2013. Analysis of Toyota Motor Corporation.
Pil, F.K. and Fujimoto, T., 2007. Lean and reflective production: the dynamic nature of production models. International journal of production research, 45(16), pp.3741-3761.
Robbins, S., De Cenzo, D., Coulter, M. and Woods, M., 2013. Management: the essentials. Pearson Higher Education AU.
Sosnovskikh, S., 2016. Toyota Motor Corporation: Organizational Culture.
Stacks, C. and Ulmer, J., 2009. Applied lean thinking: general usage principles. Technology Interface Journal, 9(2), pp.1-13.
Thompson, A., 2015. Toyota’s generic strategy and intensive growth strategies. Retrieved April, 27, p.2016.
Rosell, D., Lakemond, N. and Nazli Wasti, S., 2014. Integrating knowledge with suppliers at the R&D-manufacturing interface. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 25(2), pp.240-257.
Twarowska, K. and K?kol, M., 2013. International Business Strategy-reasons and forms of expansion into foreign markets. In Management, knowledge and learning International conference(pp. p1005-1011).
Wang, C.N., Huang, Y.F., Le, T.N. and Ta, T.T., 2016. An innovative approach to enhancing the sustainable development of Japanese automobile suppliers. Sustainability, 8(5), p.420.
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