PROFESSORIAL ESSAY: Productivity Improvement through People: Some New Approaches

Productivity The Problem Situation Many western manufactured products such as automobiles and electronics have lost their market shares to those manufactured in Japan. One can no longer blame this solely on cheap Japanese labour, as the income of the Japanese worker has increasingly caught up with the level found in the western world. The rude reality is that the Japanese industries are more productive than their western counterparts. Furthermore, their product quality is often superior.