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Comparison of Honda and Toyota's Management Strategies

Paper Type: Free Assignment Study Level: University / Undergraduate
Wordcount: 2491 words Published: 13th Oct 2020

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In the global automobile industry, the vehicle has become an important part of every economy in terms of increased demand (Lave et al, 2015, p.421).  Two of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world are Toyota and Honda.

The Honda Motor Company was the first Japanese automobile manufacturer which began with the construction of a motorized bicycle. Then, Honda started to develop and expand new lines of vehicle before it became successful in terms of the world market. Furthermore, it has been unceasing in its exploration of the idea of what role the motorcycle and automobile should play in society. Especially with management, the company realized the importance not only of the conventional approach of upgrading product performance, but also active efforts towards customer safety (Cuaresma et al, 2015).

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Another successful Japanese automobile manufacturer is the Toyota Motor Corporation. The manufacturer of automobiles were sought conduce by prosperous society, operating its business with a focus on vehicle production and sales. The company continued to expand to new markets specifically targeting younger buyers. Toyota has experienced significant growth well, with designs and reputation for innovative technology (Jothi and Kalaivani, 2015, p.33).

These two companies have succeeded based on management strategies. With the automobile industry becoming increasingly competitive, Honda and Toyota companies have to increase various strategies so as to thrive in the global market. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the management strategies of Honda and Toyota in order to account for its success, which has allowed them to expand with branches around the world.

To begin with the similarities, both the leadership skills of Honda and Toyota Motor Corporation represent team building in order to motivate a process of expansion and development organization into international markets. The abilities of leaders are focused on managing human resources, quality, and production targets which they use as a philosophy to share and solve work problems with colleagues (Taneja, 2012, p.128). The role of a company leader is to emphasize fundamentals in the long-term. In the same way, these two companies have brainstorm sessions with the CEO; it is important for managers working in organizations to think about their own experiences with employees to understand how essential the relationship of the leader-follower for organizational well-being is, as well as how irreplaceable is a good leader. Brainstorming works by the method of association, it can improve collaboration and increase the quantity of ideas, and is designed so that all accompany participate. This technique may be necessary to prioritize them to reach to the best solution in a proper way. The CEO also builds clear vision including trust towards employees in order to achieve an objective. The same of leader’s skills seem to that motivating teams and helps them to develop and work together towards common goals.

The supply chains of these automobile brands have established a very high level of supply chain management. Coordination across several functions has enabled better management of the supply chain network by both. A supply chain is a process that causes products such as procurement, manufacturing, distribution, and transportation. Therefore, a supply chain is like the backbone of manufacturing process apart from timely availability of raw materials (Fujimoto et al, 2019, p.6). As the author claims the company needs to activate their suppliers so as to ensure continuous supply. The concept of supply chain management of Honda and Toyota consists of all parties involved in implement customers’ demands. The parties involved are manufacturers, suppliers, transporters, warehouses, retailers, and customers. Therefore, the production will start from manufacturer based on prediction, inventory, and stock component and sent to buyer. Both Parts and accessories for the local dealer and national customers are no longer being fully sourced from Japan, but are being procured from around the world. The emphasis on the smoothing of the production flow and just-in-time assembly requires strictly scheduled deliveries at the same time, the low inventory pull system for replenishment demands high frequency, small lot deliveries (Zhang et al, 2015). This result is often a large of low inventory which impacts customers. The supply chain management of both organizations is a part of success that they develop this strategy with supports different decisions and provides a clear viewpoint of products, information, and services.

Both Honda and Toyota’s marketing strategies have created these global brands that have brought several attractive and innovative car models to the market. They have also a major market in Japan which is part of their revenues. Thus, the brands use several channels for marketing apart from the traditional methods including also advertising products and models on digital channels and promoting their brands using sponsorships (Amasaka and Kakuro, 2017). Moreover, the main aim of promotion is to persuade customers, create interest, and generate sales or present information to buyer. It is one of the basic elements of the market, which includes product, price, place, and promotion. The way of promotion is targeted for communication with consumers in the independent media such as the newspapers and magazines. Therefore, advertising is the main method for their companies. The marketing goals normally are the expanding of the company. For example, Honda and Toyota, concentrated on grow their business including there is marketing plans that they emphasizes strategies to increase customers base (Greimel, 2017). Nevertheless, having a suitable marketing plan will help company leaders develop such as managing product, price, and process. These marketing strategies are a crucial aspect of business and require analysis, time, planning, and appropriate budget allocations.

On the other hand, the leadership skills of Honda and Toyota automobile have differences in terms of plans and vision. Firstly, Honda’s leadership has developed flexible plans, where they anticipate possible problems and solutions to those problems. They use a “soft” approach in order to hold on to customers such as comprehensive services. However, there also many plans for the leadership of Toyota concentrate on promoting the growth of the team member including leaders are eager about connecting people who deal with the value-added work in improving the process. Moreover, encouragement employee is also an important as Toyota leader. The goal of Toyota is to develop people so they are strong people who can think and follow the way at all levels in the organization. As Bateman and Snell (2009) claims: The principle of great leader originates from trust, honesty, cooperation, and teamwork (Bateman and Snell, 2009). Put simply, team leaders help their teams improve skill by working with team members to solve problems. Secondly, the vision may have changed all the time, but the leader continuously shares the vision for employees in order to learn and adjust (Boyatzis et al, 2015). Sharing vision of them that it is necessary for motivates employee to follow the leader. For instance, the vision of Honda must have display and reflect the unique strengths, culture, values, beliefs, and direction of the organization while Toyota has Inspire loyalty and caring through the involvement of all employees. Taken together, these skills indicate that there are different ideas of leaders in terms of plans and visions.

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Supply chain is techniques of all parts coordinating from supplying raw materials to delivering products to customers. Toyota has different management methods better than Honda is “Lean” manufacturing, which focuses on versatility to respond changes, such as customer demand, new products, and employees. Lean system uses resources to create value for customers, thinking from the customer view, reduce the waste including continuous improvement to achieve high results even less resources (Sanders et al, 2016, p.812). Therefore, organizations view continuous improvement as a daily mindset and practice which they are able to deliver on their cars to their customers. The goal of Lean process improvement is to enable teams to systematically find ways to deliver more value to their customers faster and the operational structure enough to perform by enhancing productivity. Moreover, supply management enables a decrease in inventory cost. Fulfillment of orders and overhead cost will be destroyed, allowing for inventory to have a much more steady flow. While Honda brand have supply chain method such as buying utility policy from dealers including concentrate on quality, cost, and delivery (Alnasser, 2013, p.4). For a successful supply chain has to deliver goods to their customers as quickly as possible without errors including depends on the product design.

The marketing strategies are important to both of Honda and Toyota companies as a result of they have to contract and collaborate with their consumers. It is basically focused on encouraging target population to buy products and services. Nonetheless, the differences of marketing between two organizations are marketing mix such as price, placement, and promotion. The marketing mix is one of the most famous marketing terms that analyze management and plan to conduct marketing activities (Solimun and Fernandes, 2018 p.77).  Firstly, pricing strategies rely on pricing policies for example, setting by price level, price flexible and the diversity of competition in the market. Determining this will be a critical factor in revenue for the companies as it will impact profit, supply, and demand of customers. This strategy will make consumers compare the options with similar prices, and as a result sales of the more attractive high-priced product will increase. Secondly, placement strategies focus on providing customers access to the product. For instance, where are target customers shopping? It’s important to consider how each of these places influences the overall customer experience. Finally, promotion strategies will motivate and convince buyers to be interested and purchased decisions including services which Honda and Toyota have different promotions such as sale promotion and after-sales service. An effective promotion will ensure good sales and a manufacturer must attempt to create a conducive environment.

To sum up, this essay has tried to highlight the many strategies that both management systems use to succeed in the expansion of branches around the world.  The management strategies of both companies have similarities and differences in terms of leadership skills, supply chain, and marketing. Therefore, it appears that their leadership skills focus on team building when the CEOs persuade employees to manage problems by creating brainstorming sessions to reach their company goals. The supply chains are part of the management strategy that they have attached significance to process from raw materials to customers. A key strategy of marketing is not only to product or promotion, but they have also digital marketing methods such as website so as to promote merchandise including increasing their new customer’s base. On the other hand, among the plans and visions of leader styles, there are also differences that it is essential towards employees to follow the CEO. Both companies have different methods of managing supply chains which Toyota focus on buyer demand with “Lean” system and delivering products to customers. They depend on planning systems including using marketing factors such as price, placement, and promotion. Taken together, these findings point to the similarities and differences of the management strategies of Honda and Toyota automobile.

However, there are a lot of strategies that both companies still need to make them more successful. Honda could learn from Toyota about the “Lean” manufacturing system. Meanwhile, Honda has developed a process in order to expand into the global market better than Toyota. Further research is clearly needed on the issue of how they concentrate on marketing communication of higher competition.   

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