Comparing transnational production systems: the automobile industry in the USA and Japan.

This paper explores social and spatial dimensions in the world car industry with a view to better understanding the variations in the ways transnational production systems are organized by companies in various industries in various parts of the world. Japanese corporations have forged the world's most competitive auto production system. The challenge from Japan has forced enterprises and governments in the developed capitalist societies to confront anew how they organize their own production systems and how it is that production systems become the mainsprings for economic development and change. Japanese companies will serve as the major, United States companies the minor, reference points in the comparison of transnational production systems in the world car industry. The Japanese automobile industry experienced massive growth after World War II. Toyota and Nissan went from insignificant companies in the 1940s to the world's, second and third largest car makers by the early 1980s. A key to the competitive international success of Japanese companies is the way they organize and tightly control their many layered production systems.