台湾造船业的核心能力和竞争策略--英文版

1、core competence and competitive strategy of the taiwanshipbuilding industry:a resource-based approachinstitute of business and management , june 2004the shipbuilding output for taiwan had been 4th in the world until 1999; however, at that time, it dropped to the 9th. currently, the world shipbuildin

2、g capacity greatly exceeds the demand and this disparity could grow to 40% by 2005. facing this turning point, the main objective of this study is to re-examine the international competitive position of taiwanshipbuilding industry; further-more, to realize the industries，core competences and attempt

3、 to recommend competitive strategies for the future development of taiwan's shipbuilding industry the results show that taiwan main core competence is production management, mainly through heterogeneous resource analysis. this paper also proposes that for general types of ships, taiwan's dev

4、elopment priority should be to utilize low-cost strategies to occupy the market continuously; as to high value added types of ships, taiwan's priority should be to utilize differential and focus strategies. finally, the direction of government policy is suggested.introductionresource-based view

5、has become a significant approach for strategy management through many literature discussions since wemerfelt highlighted how a department using unique and idiosyncratic organizational resources can sustain superior performance 1. firms can obtain advantages by analyzing and re-assessing information

6、 about the assets they already control, if these assets can be used to implement valuable market strategies and if similar assets are not controlled by a significant number of competitors. navarro suggested that a resource-based view of the firm is a key for the renewal of strategic thinking in matu

7、re industries 2.barney proposed that resources include all assets, capabilities, organizational processes, firm attributes, information, knowledge, etc. controlled by a firm that enable the firm to conceive of and implement strategies that improve its effciency and effectiveness 3. however; there ar

8、e a few related concepts in strategy literature which are worth mentioned as follows:organizational capabilityulrich & lake proposed that organizational capability is the ability to build firm's internal structure and process, and these structure and process are able to affect employees to c

9、reate organizational appropriable capability hence, the organization is able to fit with strategic requirement and environmental change 4, 5distinctive competenceselznick proposed that distinctive competence is to describe the character of an organization, refers to those things that an organization

10、 does especially well in comparison with its competitors 6. snow & hrebiniak stated that distinctive competence is the capability that organization competitors do not possess 7.core competenceporter proposed that mainstream strategy research through the 1980s and the early 1990s broadly assumed

11、that it is possible for a firm to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage, a unique position relative to competitors that allows it to consistently outperform them 8 post porters ideal, much of the research on competitive advantage focused on core competence as a major source of that advantage 9

12、. core competence is the collective learning in the organization, especially how to coordinate diverse production skills and integrate multiple streams of technologies 10, 11. a firms core competence is defined as the vector of the irreversible assets along which the firm is uniquely advantaged and

13、it is asset of differentiated technological skills, complementary assets, and organizational routines and capacities 12. core competence is skills and areas of knowledge that are shared across business units and result from the integration and harmonization of strategic business unit competence 13.i

14、n order to observe firms in a wider point of view and to study in a more specific agglomerate effect, resources and core competences are used in this study.the shipbuilding industry is an internalized, liberalized, and mature industry 2, 14. the related industry network is extensive and contains ups

15、tream suppliers for material and equipment, e.g. the steel and iron industries, machinery industry, electrical and electronic industries, and downstream customers, eg the shipping industry and national defense industry. in post-war japan, as later in south korea, shipbuilding was identified as a key

16、, strategic industry capable of promoting wider economic growth. in addition, japan and south korea comprise the first and second largest shipbuilding nations in the world. according to statistics in lloyd's register, in recent years, the main shipbuilding nations: japan, south korea, china, ger

17、many, italy, taiwan, poland, spain, denmark, and croatia share 90% of the worlds shipbuilding output. the shipbuilding output for taiwan had been 4th in the world; however, it dropped to the 9th in 1999. at present, there are 98 shipyards in taiwan, most of them are small to medium sized and the sta

18、te-owned china shipbuilding corporation (csbc). established in 1973，csbc is the only large shipbuilder to build and repair large merchant vessels and naval ships in taiwan. the annual output of csbc shares of the total shipbuilding output is 90%; therefore, csbc plays a significant role in taiwan，s

19、shipbuilding industry. in february 1999, 34 ships were on order, totaling 1,160,000 gross tons at csbc.76% of the orders were exported to denmark, greek, switzerland, and france, among others. recently, the world shipbuilding capacity has greatly exceeded the demand and this disparity could grow to

20、40% by 2005 151. therefore,taiwarfs shipbuilding industry confronts serious competition from the international market. taiwan is the 15th largest trading nation in the world. the total amount of import and export trade is 210 billion us dollars annually, of which 90% depends on sea transport. thousa

21、nds of ships enter and leave keelung and kaohsiung harbors annually therefore, the shipbuilding industry plays an important role in assisting national defense construction, promoting shipping development, and boosting related industrial development. facing the dilemma of taiwan's shipbuilding in

22、dustry, the main objective of this study is to find out the competitive position of taiwan's shipbuilding industry; furthermore, to realize the core competences and attempt to recommend competitive strategies for future development of taiwan，s shipbuilding industry.competitiveness analysiscompet

23、itiveness of firms implicates the competitive capability of the international market through a set of globalization strategies 16. however, porter's framework does not recommend a common yardstick of practical comparative analysis for competitiveness. in the commercial competitive world of shipb

24、uilding a measure of cost per unit output indicates a shipyard's effectiveness 17. in table 1, japan, south korea, china, west europe, and taiwan's costs per compensated gross tonnage ($/cgt) are shown.table 1 index of competitive factors for shipbuilding.nationman-year/cgtcost$/man-yearcost

25、$/cgtjapan0.0093us$39,716us$369.35south korea0.0166us$26,226us$435.35china0.1157us$7,170us$829.56w. europe0.02us$37,146us$742.92taiwan0.0112us$37,682us$422.40sourceworldshipbuilding一the challengesaheact', drewayshipping consuluintslimited, 1999japan is the most competitive nation with us$369.35;

26、 taiwan at us$422.2 and south korea at us$435.35 are in second and third place for competitiveness. birmingham, hall & kattan argued that performance should be presented simply as cost$/cgt; however, this fails to indicate the qualitative difference between shipyards operating in high- or low-wa

27、ge economies 18. this issue can be addressed if the measure is disaggregated into two components, namely: cost$/man-year and man-year/cgt. as can be seen in figure 1, the cost$/man-year is represented on the horizontal axis, and the man-year/cgt is on the vertical axis. together, these construct an

28、iso-cost curve. each point (country) on the iso-cost curve has the same cost$/cgt. regarding the cost$/man-year, china with a figure of around us$7,170，possesses the most competitive advantage of wage level. south korea, with a figure of us$26,226 is the2nd nation. west europe, japan, and taiwan are

29、 close, as all are high-wage level nations. regarding the statistics of manyear/cgt, japan with 0.0093, has the highest productivity. both south korea and taiwan are quite close, and better than west europe. the productivity of china, at 0.1157, is the lowest. concerning the iso-cost curve, japan ho

30、lds the most competitive position, which implies that japan has the potential for keeping the lead in the shipbuilding market. both south korea and taiwan fall in approximately the same iso-cost curve, and have little choice but to focus on maintaining a quality lead over their competitors, while ma

31、king steep change in productivity, based on their core competences as shown in figure 1 manycarngt taiwan japancost$/man-yearfigurel. indicative iso-cost competitiveness curve. source world shipbuildingthechallenges ahead”，dreway shipping consultants limited,1999.industry resources basedbarney propo

32、ses that a variety of authors have generated lists of attributes that may enable firms to conceive of and implement value-creating strategies 3. barney also proposes that firm resources can be classified into three categories: physical capital resources, human capital resources, and organizational c

33、apital resources. chatterjee & wemerfeld recommended that firm resources be classified into three categories: physical resources, intangible assets, and financial resources 19. fernandez, montes& vazquez propose that intangible resources can be classified as human capital, organizational cap

34、ital, relational capital, and technological capital 20. this study synthesizes these discussions and recommends that resources for shipbuilding firms can be classified into four categories: tangible assets, intangible assets, management capabilities, and technology capabilities; and analyzes the res

35、ources for major shipbuilding nations as follows:tangible assetsphysical assets. taiwarfs csbc was the 6th largest shipbuilding firm in the world from 1990 to 1998; of the other top 10 shipyards, six belong to japan, and three are south korean shipyards; implying that the shipbuilding scale of japan

36、 and south korea is very large. on the other hand, there are only a few nations with 1,000,000 dwt of dry dock, e.g. the resa shipyards in spain, harland & wolff shipyard in the uk, hyundai heavy industry and daewoo heavy industry in south korea, and csbc in taiwan. taiwan must utilize its compe

37、titive advantage of such physical assets to acquire vlcc/ulcc and very large container orders.vertical integration* the total cost for building ships can be divided into direct material cost, direct labor cost, and manufacturing expense. the cost of direct materials shares 54% of the total shipbuild

38、ing cost as shown in table 2table 2. cost structure for taiwan，s shipbuilding (unit %)item19961997199819992000averagedirect material51.1353.7055.9956.9453.4554.24direct labor25.0624.6015.7713.5415.4118.87manufacturing expense23.8121.7028.2429.5231.1426.89total100100100100100100direct material cost i

39、s one of the key factors in increasing competitiveness for contract quotes in the world shipbuilding market, and the direct material cost competitive advantage concerns the vertical integration degree of upstream material suppliers for shipbuilders. if the vertical integration degree of upstream mat

40、erial suppliers is higher, the marine equipment market could be self-sufficient and the material transportation costs will be lowered. the shipbuilders in japan and south korea operate within a group. those groups are divided to shipbuilding, heavy machinery, and electronics divisions, and can manuf

41、acture marine equipment by themselves. therefore their material costs are lower than that of taiwan by about 10-15%. for instance, for four 1200teu container vessels, both the a category (main diesel engine) and b category (auxiliary machinery) parts, which take 70% of the cost of direct materials,

42、need to be imported due to the fact that no domestic supplier is willing to manufacture these products because of the economic scale.intangible assetsshipowners focus on shipbuilding quality and delivery during contract quotation negotiation. csbc in taiwan has carried out complete quality managemen

43、t for many years. at present, csbc has already acquired iso-9001 certification for quality management systems for shipbuilding by lloyd's register of shipping in the uk and iso-9002 certification for quality management systems for ship repair by det norgke veritas. due to this, 76% of taiwarfs o

44、rders are exported to denmark, greece, and switzerland, among others. this implies that taiwan，s shipbuilding quality is affirmed by international society and foreign ship-owners. product quality is the competitive advantage for high manufacturing cost nations. generally speaking, the shipbuilding q

45、uality of japan is the best, and that of south korea and taiwan are equivalent. for the most part, all nations are able to control their product delivery in a timely manne匚 details of this will be discussed in next section.management capabilityproduction management capability. production management

46、capability for shipbuilding can be evaluated by scheduling, resource allocation, manpower leveling, and cost control. regarding scheduling, japan requires 11-12 months, south korea 12-13 months, china 18-20 months 21, and taiwan 11-13 months from the time a contract is signed to the launching of a v

47、essel the reason that taiwan possesses this competitive advantage is due to production-oriented design and modular production as follows:production-oriented design. production-oriented design means that the design department can negotiate effectively with the factory during the design stage to compl

48、y with the requirements of the contract and specifications. the action plan of production-oriented design for csbc is as follows:(1) the confirmation of production strategy: the design department negotiates with the factory the strategy for executing production, e.g the general arrangement and cabin

49、 plan to be considered, to make the work convenient for shop.(2) the confirmation of production factors: in the early design stage, it is necessary to confirm and be careful of the factors that can promote productivity, e.g. work quantity, effciency, redundant work, auxiliary work, facility, environ

50、ment, so as to prevent unnecessary rework.(3) the recommendation of a basic index for production: a basic index forproduction is used to evaluate effciency during the building process. the items of a basic index include: construction weight, pipe and cable pieces and lengths, etc. the index is also

51、used by the shop to arrange the work to be done.modular production method. the traditional production method begins from laying the keel and installation of internal equipment and system, and finish outfitting work after the launch. it is not the most effcient method due to an extended dry dock peri

52、od. csbc carries out modular production in order to reduce its cycle time modular production means that the outfitting material is installed in the block at the assembly shop, with the block then being hung by crane, so that workers in all areas can work simultaneously. for instance, when an outfitt

53、ing worker, e.g. electrical work, bench work, piping work, installation of equipment and systems is working on one block, the smithing and welding can be done on the next block.other advantages for modular production are:(1) the main system, such as the diesel engine, can be installed into a complet

54、e block instead of installing it on board through an opening in the deck.(2) the complicated pipeline work can be installed from the top, side, and front, instead of installing it on board only from one direction.(3) building each block on the ground is easier than building it in the dock, and helps

55、 reduce man-hours and rework, shortening cycle time, and reducing production costs.marketing management capability. in terms of product, japarfs shipbuilding quality is the best in the world, with south korea and taiwan's quality as reported before. regarding the characteristics and type of prod

56、uct, japans main products are high value-added ship and general ship; therefore, japan is the most competitive in terms of advantages. as for price, south korea has maintained control of pricing during the recent expansion phase so that prices remain low 8, and the other shipbuilding nations are the

57、 price followe匸 as for promotion, japan and south korea have established field offices or send their marketers overseas extensively, to gather customer information at the source. at present, taiwan acquires orders mainly through brokers, however, establishing a system to investigate the relationship

58、 between the broker and the customer is lacking besides, estimating and bidding is an important process during the contract quotation period, which should represent the wisdom of an interdisciplinary shipbuilding team consisting of the design department, the production control department, the accoun

59、ting department, and others 22. for instance, previously, the labor cost estimate for building a new ship at csbc was simply calculated as a function of hull steel weight. however, there might be an enormous deviation between the actual labor cost and the estimated labor cost such as with the container vessel no. 101 built for a german ship-owner, in which the actual labor cost was about twice as much a