Question

Q1. Using your home country, Jamaica, select an organization with a competitive advantage to examine how their strategies are implemented.

a. Why would you classify the organization as having a competitive advantage in the respective market?

b. What types of strategies does this organization employ?

c. As a critical thinker, are there any strategies that you think this organization should implement and/or eliminate? Why?

Answer 1

1.Toyota company is one of those organizations who has made its mark in the field of automotive. Toyota has a major Research and development team and the company ensures that it is properly funded. If we have to look at the competitive advantage that Toyota would possess is having a strong and innovative R & D team.

a. I would categorize Toyota as as having a competitive advantage is due to thier consistency in quality, The major reason is that they have raised the standard of building high quality automotives by constant innovation. Quality is something which is attained by frequent innovation. They also have strong distributional channnels which ensures there is no delay in thier production process and later in the period they have also increased thier production to a larger scale. Now, this increase in production paved a way for increase in sales and the auto-giant kept growing. Being a Japanese company, they have been continously working on Supply chain concepts like JIT, Kaizan and lean manufacturing. These were all part of thier operational excellence.

b. Toyota has always emphasized on quality and therefore, they have thier own manufacturing system in place which is called Toyota Production System. The main purpose behind implement such a system is to eradicate waste and improving production efficiency.The organization has understood that there is a need to standardize the process to achieve lean production. TBS is also one of those key strategies implemented by Toyota.

In order to streamline the process, it has also paved a way for JIT (Just in time). The concept of Just in time helps in lowering down the carrying cost. It helps in effective decision making as they assist the production team on when to make a particular component. Though they were an automotive giant, they have found a solid reason to work on thier supply managament activities. It has also understood the importance of suppliers in thier chain of activities and always ensured a smooth co-ordination with them.

c. Somewhere it seems like this Organization after being the world leader for about two decades, have slowly declined. The company might have turned a bit complacent with the market position it held or maybe they have gone out of thier knowledge of manufacturing. Sometimes, you tend to experiment more and might try to adapt a new knowledge which may not be suited to your way of doing business. Success is defined where you combine the idea on what you create and for whom and how do you create?. Clarity in these aspects does gurrantee consistency in sucess, whereas deviating from these basic concepts may end up your business.