Sony spin-off manufacturing plant: a typical Japanese self-salvation

Zhang Shufang Editor's note the financial crisis that spread from America seems to have had a big impact on Japanese electronics companies. These once to product unique, the price super high label of the Japanese enterprises are declining. At the same time, American it firms are sweeping the world with a more open mind and greater value. Sony wants to change the dilemma through a structural adjustment.　　However, the lone defeated "martial arts master" want to become from the cloud of the "martial arts leader", "Sony" to go the road is still very long, Peel once had the advantage of becoming a drag on the manufacturing business, just the first step ... Recently, Sony and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. reached an agreement to sell its two factories to Hon Hai, including an LCD TV factory in Slovakia.　　It is another move by Sony to divest its manufacturing plants and make structural adjustments in the past year.　　Industry insiders pointed out that with the intensification of competition and product quality gap narrowing, Sony and other Japanese enterprises in the manufacturing advantage is lost, to be in the new industrial environment to become a leading enterprise, reduce the high production costs is particularly important. Get rid of the baggage. Of the two companies sold by Sony, 90% per cent of the company's Nitra (Nitra) plant in Slovakia will be sold to Hon Hai, and the contract for the manufacture of televisions to be sold to the European market will also be given to Hon Hai. This is not the first time Sony has sold a factory.　　A year ago, the company reached a similar television factory agreement in Mexico. In fact, Sony's sale of the plant does not mean it is out of competition, but the unbearable cost has dragged down the once-big electronics giant.　　Sensitive companies are combining the best technology with the lowest cost to create a more powerful cost advantage, but Sony is faltering in the shift towards low-cost manufacturing across the border. "The cost of the game is also the business of Sony." PSP chooses to produce most products locally in Japan, sending it to global sales, resulting in higher production costs.　　Said Wen Jianping, vice president of Allwin market consultancy. With the increasing competition in consumer electronics and the falling prices of products, reducing costs and reengineering the process has become a change that Sony must do to cope with the new competitive landscape. In the transformation, "light assets" became the key word of Sony.　　It is reported that Sony's digital cameras, notebooks and play redevelop game machine part of the production has been outsourced. The backdrop for Sony's change was that Sony lost some of its market share in 2009 as the price competitiveness of television products was weak. Meanwhile, Sony's poor performance in the global economic crisis has seen its first operating loss in 14 years.　　In fiscal 2008, Sony lost $1.01 billion and its market capitalisation fell to 1/3 of Samsung, its main competitor. This led to a plethora of product lines and slow-moving Sony, which had to embark on an architectural overhaul.　　In February 2009, Sony announced a major restructuring plan and a new management team, Stringer as chairman and CEO, as well as the replacement of the China-mortar group as president. Kang Kingyuan, senior PR manager of Sony (China) Co., Ltd. toldSince then, Sony has made the biggest structural adjustment in history, the China Business daily. The company is divided into consumer electronics and Components group, networked products and services group.　　In this time of asset streamlining, Stringer also formed two companies across the company to ensure that Sony's networked products and services are seamlessly connected in a common user interface and reach customers in a fast, low-cost and efficient way.　　Japan's predicament in the IT industry and consumer electronics, stripping the expensive manufacturing business, focused on the core of higher profit margins has become a trend.　　At the same time as Sony sold its two factories, another Japanese-owned company, which was no longer in sight, sold a Singapore factory to Taiwan's friends of electronics, a factory that produced a LCD screen for laptop displays. "The current industrial environment has changed a lot." Qin, a researcher at the Tsinghua Management Leadership Research Center, points out that Sony, including many Japanese companies, is a feature of advanced manufacturing technology. Taking television as an example, in the era of analog television, it is really highly technical, the choice of components or the quality of the welding process, with the product quality of the relationship is very large.　　Sony previously developed products, Walkerman, special Li-Dragon TV are in the manufacture of differentiation. But after entering the digital age, circuit processing has been based on chip and software design, standardization degree and automation degree is more and more high, manufacturing difficulty is also decreasing.　　Now, the quality of their production and foundry production is not very different, and the cost difference is very large. "Because the production quantity of both is not one level, the cost control ability is not comparable." Stripping out the manufacturing assets can first activate the assets and make the company get a lot of cash. At the same time, in terms of operational efficiency and cost, there will be a great increase.　　"said Ye, chief analyst for Asia-Pacific hardware systems at Gartner, a market research firm. And for Sony such a loving technology, has been lying on its own technical resources for many years to reap the benefits of Japanese companies, their technical advantages are also being deconstruction.　　From the last years of the past century, the global technology resources have entered a new era, leading the technology trend is no longer the development departments of those big companies, but more like the Silicon Valley with unlimited business prospects of seed companies and even individuals.　　This makes a new rule of the game coming into being: in a rapidly changing era, the foundations of sitting in their own technical castles and getting higher prices for products with unique technical differences have been shaken, a senior person in the electronics industry said.　　Those in the midst of the financial crisis should see that the reason for today's predicament is not only the ferocious crisis, but also the changes in the industrial landscape, the ability to control their own cost and the no longer exclusive of technology. The reporter observes the Japanese enterprise new Road "The Japanese original goods" Once was the high quality synonym which many people flocked to. However, the emergence of a generation of factories all over the world, with low cost and large orders, has broken the beautyLi's "Legend". Let professional people do professional things. Japanese companies are starting to learn about American businesses, stripping out sectors that don't matter, or even drag companies forward, such as manufacturing plants.　　However, to become "light" is only the first step, how to truly "fly" up, the Japanese enterprises must also be a greater level of innovation. One side is the decline of Japan's electronics industry, one side is the rise of many companies in the United States, Apple, Google, Microsoft, they and the emphasis on unique products, systems closed by the Japanese companies are completely two ways.　　They prefer to build the platform, seize the main profit space, the core of the value chain to drive the entire value chain, and even promote the development of the entire industrial system. IBM, for example, bought some middleware companies after selling its hardware business.　　From the "on-demand" to the "wisdom of the Earth", this world-class enterprises can always put forward a concept and vision, and under the idea of organizing resources, and its concept also to a large extent affect the industry process.　　The lever effect of the value chain management is the part that must be learned in the digital age for the products spread throughout the value chain, but the profit is not high. In this case, it is only a first step to make the stripping, real saving, and more importantly, to carry out effective value chain management on the basis of "light assets".　　After the internal reform, Sony and other Japanese companies to do is to connect with the outside world, to form a more open platform. From a martial arts master to a martial arts leader, the Japanese enterprise's new road is just beginning.