Competing for the Future

Strategy as Leverage

Together Figures 7-1 through 7-5 tell a story. In Figure 7-1 we see evidence of the astounding employee productivity gains made by Japan’s manufacturing firms. Nothing new here. Now look at Figure 7-2. Here we see that Japanese manufacturing companies not only possess a labor productivity advantage, their overhead costs have also been less, as a percentage of total costs, than is typical in the United States or Germanic countries. ...