RIP In Recent Years, Japanese Companies Such as Mitsubishi, NEC, Fujitsu

question 124

Multiple Choice

RIP
In recent years, Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi, NEC, Fujitsu, and Sony began turning to Americans to manufacture Japanese products. While Sony, Panasonic, and other Japanese giants still excel at cranking out high- quality consumer electronics products such as camcorders and TVs by the millions, it's a different story in industries with short product cycles, which require factories that must build what customers order instead of churning out products in anticipation of demand. Japan's great strength, repetitive manufacturing, is becoming its greatest weakness. This production-on-demand form of management cannot depend on JIT. Instead the American companies rely on raw-in-process inventory, or RIP. RIP calls for keeping a reasonable quantity of varied raw materials or components on hand to meet changing customer demand.
-Refer to RIP. A company that builds what customers order rather than what it thinks customers should buy has a strong_______ .

• A) customer focus
• B) product orientation
• C) sales orientation
• D) organizational structure
• E) customer synergy

---

Definitions:

Fixed Capital

Refers to the long-term assets used in production, including buildings, machinery, and equipment, which are not frequently replaced.

Total Variable Cost

The total of expenses that change in proportion to the activity or production level of a business.

Economic Costs

The total cost of choosing one action over another, including both explicit and implicit costs.

Total Cost

The total amount of money spent on producing goods or services, encompassing both constant and fluctuating expenses.