Global Perspective for Competitive Enterprise, Economy and Ecology

Abstract

For the first time since early 1930s, General Motors cannot call itself the world’s largest automaker. Its sales fell behind Toyota in 2008. The famous Lean Production (LP), a brainchild of Toyota Production System (TPS) has played a part in Toyota’s success story. The Big 3 (the Three Big Motor in U.S.) and other enterprises have imitated all the Toyota’s production system in a tentative to become more competitive. It took more than ten years for the Big 3 to learn TPS or LP related production strategy, but without the same power of Toyota Co. Why did the Big 3 fail to achieve their expected growth despite their adoption of lean management? The aim of this paper is to answer two significant questions. The first question is “what is the comprehensive action for the Big 3 to grow up their market share?” In order to address this question and get reasonable answer, this study tries to use the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to discover the root causes and countermeasures for the Big 3 to break through their paradigms. The second question is “TOC can really deal with this kind of complicated problem effectively?” From the case study, we successfully answered the two preceding questions, and present some findings about TOC problem solving strategy.