Japanese Technological Corporation’s Mot

MOT is the abbreviation of Management of Technology, which is also called as Technology Management or MOT in Japan. The concept of management of technology is that technology based companies believe that by assessing the potential and introducing them to real business, they can create competitive advantage, maximize companies’ value, and ensure their continuous growth. Japanese have had remarkable impacts on world economy. Many technology industries such as electronics, watches, cameras, motorcycles, automobiles, machine tools, and robots are dominated by Japanese firms or are profoundly impacted by them. Needless to say, the phenomenon has drawn the attention from all over the world and given other country the idea “If Japan can, why can’t we?” How could Japanese have such success on technological industry? According to Professor Hisatoshi Yamamoto, the purpose of MOT at that time is the improvement of business performance by technological capabilities including the reinforcement of research and development competitiveness, decision-making ability of technology investment, enforcement of solidarity bonds, extensive technology investment capability, execution of a long-term human resource training plan, and introduction of external technology. That is, Japanese industry considers MOT a fundamental element and had made active efforts to practice it. Since technology is playing an increasingly important role to business than in the past and management and technology are highly linked, companies need to start with the management of large-scale research and development to support innovation. Hence, linking technology strategy to corporate strategy becomes the most important topic. The Toyota Production System (TPS), an integrated socio-technical system, can be an example of MOT. It is developed by Toyota and comprises its management philosophy, including aspects of Jidoka, just-in-time production, kaizen, Muda…etc to reduce both inventories and defects. The TPS...