Overview of Management Evolution and Technological Development in Nippon Steel Corporation

摘要

Various problems are coming to surface as natural outcomes, such as collapse of the bubble economy in Japan, globalization of economy, increase in the severity of the competitive environment, movement toward environmental harmony, clarification of corporate responsibility for safety of industrial products, and anxiety about labor force against the background of declining birth rate and population in Japan. It is interesting to note that new technologies and products announced by Japanese steel companies suggest the directions the society and market will take in the future. Japan's steel industry announces more than 50 new products per year, attesting to its liveliness. New social trends, market trends, and management concepts are publicized with fresh effects. We have digested these things long time ago and can say that the Japanese steel industry is innovative in this sense. We think that the problems that confront and will confront us will not shake the foundation of the Japanese steel industry. The point is to make products of good quality at low cost. For such high-quality, low-cost products are good for customers, markets, and local and global communities, and we must produce such products if we are to develop and maintain the capability to do so. I think that we should value this simple mechanism because it allow us to function autonomously and materialize our various possibilities.