Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage. Answer: Introduction Toyota is a multinational company in Japan, they are known as one of the largest manufacturers in automobile sector who sells over 7.5 million models in continents. Toyota has created distinctive set of values and principles that have been rooted in constructive years in japan. Toyota in Australia being a subsidiary markets various Toyota products and advertise them manages business operations and motorsports in Australia. They have announced that they have become a national distribution and sales company by the end of 2017. Their strength and weakness lies in the strong market positioning and their wide spread distribution channels on the other hand their product recalling affected brand image also the poor allocation of resources lead to few losses. . The competitive advantage of Toyota in home country as well as Australia is been discussed here under and how they operate in Australia. This company is in the mature stage of its industry life cycle (Anon, 2017). Toyotas operations in Japan Toyota is one of the renowned industry leader in manufacturing. Their operating system is an integrated socio-technical, they manufacture and organize logistics for automobile manufacturers which include suppliers and customers. Their approach is built on Just-in-time production which was created by the founder of Toyota. This approach helps to eliminate waste and design in a way that it lessens the burden and the inconsistency to achieve the smooth system of delivering the expected outcomes. Just-in-time explains everything clearly that company should make what is needed at the time and the fixed amount which is needed at that moment only. An another operating system of Toyota is Jidoka and it is used in Toyota production system to automate but with a human touch, it simply means an automation which require human to operate but work is done in automation (Toyota Australia, 2017). The automation help rapid detection of any mistake and their correction in the particular process where it occurred and in this way it ease the process of the workers need to judge the operation whether it works normal. Sometimes one has to wait for the final product and it is not sure that product will come out as expected there are always the chances of occurrence of defective products. Automation help them to detect any defect at an earlier stage only (Kumar et al., 2013). Toyota operates in Australia in a different way as compare to its home country. It has become the largest vehicle exporter who is shipping more than to 13 markets overseas. Toyota has been more simplified and got a manageable environment in Australia which has reduced the requirement of remote support. The operation system in Australia has given the company a flexibility to respond in market and enable them to achieve profits by reducing costs through various planned activities for longer term plans. As Australia is about customer-oriented mind set so the approach of just-in-time does not work here exactly the same it does in Japan. It has transformed its operating system from heterogeneous to consolidated one. One of the benefit they get in Australias operating system is their cost of service has been substantially reduced in order to improve the cost of ownership. The customers in Australia are about the design of cars rather than its functions, they are after customization in this way the improvisation and modernization has been made in end-user experience which ultimately lead to another level of success in operations in Australia. It also provides seeks to improve their processes. They form manufacturing strategies effectively in regard to design flexible and efficient processes that allow them to standardize their products keeping in mind the customers requirements (Rothaermel, 2016). Competitive advantage in Japan In spite of poor resources in Japan, Japanese companies have managed to use scarce resources in a way and adapt successfully in the global competition including geographical factors which affects the success of a company at both national and corporate level. Toyotas philosophy is about continuous improvement in their operation processes and adopt VRIO framework where this organization has acquired attributes and combinations of different attributes which will allow Toyota to perform the best from its competitors (Hines, 2016). VRIO framework helps in determining the competitive potential, values, rarity which enables the company to improve its overall efficiency by organizing its planning for the usage of resources. The competitive advantage of Toyota consists the characteristics of detecting problem at earlier stages and solving them by making continuous improvements (Laszlo, 2017). In Japan they have adopted radical redesign of their business processes, provide time to time employe e training so that quality can be maintained and keep them updated about the latest technologies. The success is mainly depend upon how the processes work in the alignment of particular objectives, Toyota has implemented few efficient strategies and invented Just-in-time approach, inventory strategy by synchronizing their processes towards lean production which make sure it eliminates waste produced in varied areas of production. There objectives are clear saying automation would require less human effort, just-in-time require less amount of time to deliver products by reducing the in-process stock or inventory and it shows high responsiveness towards customers (Hatch, 2015). Competitive advantage in Australia Toyotas competitive advantage in Australia is innovation, the key to survive in market for a long term prosperity. The hi-tech and innovative products are the factors which would help a company to survive and grow (Fujitsu.com, 2017). They develop the leading-edge technologies to innovate and make lighter material or customize as per consumers requirement. It can be said that it is more about customer centric strategy that they adopted because Australia has got high level of education and their research and development base are their strength which can be utilized in ways to enhance the functionalities of products to compete with other automobile companies. The continuous improvisation in their product lines gives them an advantage of highly efficient production and attract brand positioning in market. Their strategy is to chase new markets in order to spread all over to survive for long they have got ample of natural resources and added to the fact the innovation allow them to use w isely the natural resources which tends to make lighter material (Barney, 2014). References Anon, (2017). [online] Available at: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/tnkomo/files/analysis_of_toyota.pdf [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017]. Barney, J.B., 2014. Gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. Pearson Higher Ed. Fujitsu.com. (2017). Toyota Australia Transforms End User Computing With Fujitsu - Fujitsu Global. [online] Available at: https://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/case-studies/030414-cs-toyota-australia.html [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017]. Hatch, N.W. and Howland, C., 2015, January. When Does Competitive Advantage Improve Customer Welfare?. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2015, No. 1, p. 18091). Academy of Management. Hines, P., 2016. Toyota supplier system in Japan and the UK. In Developments in Logistics and Supply Chain Management (pp. 113-124). Palgrave Macmillan UK. Kumar, V., Jones, E., Venkatesan, R. and Leone, R.P., 2013, May. Is market orientation a source of sustainable competitive advantage or simply the cost of competing?. American Marketing Association. Laszlo, C. and Zhexembayeva, N., 2017. Embedded sustainability: The next big competitive advantage. Routledge. Rothaermel, F.T., 2016. Competitive Advantage in Technology Intensive Industries. In Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results (pp. 233-256). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Technology, M. (2017). Manufacturing Innovation: Lessons from the Japanese Auto Industry. [online] MIT Sloan Management Review. Available at: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/manufacturing-innovation-lessons-from-the-japanese-auto-industry/ [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017]. Toyota Australia. (2017). Toyota Production System. [online] Available at: https://www.toyota.com.au/toyota/company/operations/toyota-production-system [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017].