COVID-19 | Affluence | Mobile Phones | Transport | Supply Chain | Kanban Lean Manufacturing Methodology | PCs | Gaming | Downturn | Robots
In April 2020, I went on webinar re COVID-19 impact in Japan with ANZCCJ (Australian and New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Japan) and Austrade.
Tokyo Olympics in 2020 was postponed to 2021 because of COVID-19.
Japan is an incredibly affluent country from growing its wealth post World War II through exports to USA.
Japan is heavily into engineering and heavy industry creating enormous wealth.
Strangely they overinvested in large infrastructure projects like roads, freeways and bridges, so are in stagflation since about 2000 and have enormous current account deficit and debt.
In August 2012, 1:4 (24M) mobile users in Japan own a smartphone, 64% Android, 32% Apple.
In November 2012, we were approached to test Japanese social media apps for smartphones in Australian 3G and WIFI conditions. However it would have cost $10,000 (20 x $500) to setup a lab so we turned it down.
Japan is very hitech having real-time transport timetables for its commuters.
Toyota invented Kanban process to build Just In Time vehicles on their assembly lines in multiskilled workforce getting down backlogs in queues and feeding back defects so that costs were cut and workforce was dynamically able to manage the production line to the best advantage.
At Agile Brisbane in July 2013, I learned how Kanban compared to Agile methodology.
The Computer Chronicles - Japanese PCs (1984) - NEC, difficulty of Japanese computers entering US market with IBM compatible software and operating systems and English documentation, they used MSX operating system which was MS-DOS like, Ampere used APL programming language (COMDEX), peripherals easier to sell to USA (no user interface issues)
Japan has a huge gaming industry including Nintendo, Sony and Sanyo.
Since 2000, Japan has had stagflation with debt 200% of GDP with no end in sight. The government built too many pointless infrastructure projects that led to nothing driving up debt to unsustainable levels.
I visited QUT Robotronica on 18/8/13:
The Computer Chronicles - Robots - Japanese Style (1985) - Tsukuba Expo '85 - innovation, research and development, Waseda University
Created 15 Dec 2012 13:48
Updated 26 July 2020 13:12