Differences between US and Japanese Manufacturers

The Financial Times uses an Onion piece to illustrate a fundamental difference between Japanese and American manufacturers:

Intel makes chips, and Google runs websites, but ask a Japanese technology executive, “What does your company do?”, and there is every chance the reply will be, “We are a manufacturer”. What the company makes is down to circumstance and opportunity.

Some US corporations are becoming more diverse - Microsoft now makes game consoles; and some Japanese companies are trying to focus - Fujitsu wants to concentrate on IT services; but that fundamental difference in approach is still there and explains some of the contrasting behaviour of companies on opposite sides of the Pacific.

Part of this could be related to the two cultures' focus on engineering. In the US, the focus tends to be more on product engineering, the Japanese emphasize process engineering. The latter would lend it self to companies that make many different products. (Of course, none of this may matter if both economies continue to flounder and are overwhelmed by the Chinese and Europe.)

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