Dual Technology Management Model of design and production utilizing CAE ＆ experiment

At present, one of the specific measures taken is an urgent improvement of intelligent productivity for the purpose of offering highly reliable products to create customer value in a short period of time. Against this background, the author focuses on the New Japan Production Model for establishing a development designing and production engineering system in the automotive industry. This paper presents the Dual Technology Management Model of design and production for establishing a development designing and production quality assurance system that is indispensable for CAE （Computer-Aided Engineering） and experiment in the automotive industry and its effectiveness is verified.     

Impact of telecommuting on mass transit congestion: the Tokyo case

Telecommuting, a dispersed style of commuting enabled by developments in info-communication technology, is becoming increasingly popular among Japanese white-collar employees. According to our estimates, 9–14 million employees will telecommute by 2010, which will result in a 6.9–10.9% reduction in congestion in Tokyo, Japan. Associated cost savings are equivalent to 7.9–26.4% of annual spending on public transportation. Due to the considerable size of these positive external effects, some degree of policy support will be necessary to achieve a socially optimal level of penetration by telecommuting.     

Measuring DEA efficiency in cable television network facilities: what are appropriate criteria for determining the amounts of governmental subsidies?

Recent technological developments have transformed the cable television industry (CATV) from a simple re-transmitter of terrestrial broadcasting to a provider of a broader-band information infrastructure. With cable operators facing an undesirable market situation while operating a fiber optics network vital to the creation of an information-based society within Japan, the Japanese Government has introduced several supportive measures for the industry. Such governmental intervention should desirably be justified not only from a political viewpoint but also from an economic one; otherwise such measures may distort economic efficiency. In this article, using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), the authors identify the deficiencies of an accounting-based intervention scheme and propose an alternative framework with no disincentive side effects.     

Causes of inefficiency in Japanese railways: Application of DEA for managers and policymakers

Although railway services have been suffering financially due to modal shifts and aging populations, they have been, and will continue to be, an essential component of nations' basic social infrastructures. Since railway firms generate positive externalities, and are required to operate in pre-determined licensed areas, governmental intervention/support may, in some cases, be justified. Indeed, many types of subsidies are created and offered for railway operations in Japan; while some are meant to cover large investments, others are used as compensation for regional disparities. However, thus far, no attempt has been made to analyze the reasons for the underperformance of Japanese railway services. In other words, it is unclear whether this underperformance can be attributed to exogenous and uncontrollable causes, or endogenous phenomena and, hence, capable of being handled by managers. The optimal degree of intervention is thus not sufficiently known. In the current paper, we propose a method based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) to analyze the causes of inefficiency in Japanese railway operations, and, further, to calculate optimal subsidy levels. The latter are designed to compensate for railways' lack of complete discretion in changing location of their operations and/or increasing/decreasing these operations since they are a regulated service. Our proposed method was applied to 53 Japanese railway operators. In so doing, we identified several key characteristics related to their inefficiencies, and developed optimal subsidies designed to improve performance.