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    ABSTRACT.

    Over the last thirty years, strategic management has become established as a

    legitimate field of research and managerial practice (Shrivastava, 1986). In the

    evolution of strategy research, a diversity of partly competitive and partly

    supplementary paradigms have emerged. To provide an unequivocal definition

    supplementary paradigms have emerged. To provide an unequivocal definition would

    mean ignoring the versatility of strategic management. The choice of a definition and

    the application of specific strategic management techniques is greatly dependent on

    which paradigmatic schools of thought in strategic management one prefers. In this

    book, we will therefore review the various schools of thought and their contribution to

    the theory and practice of strategy.

    A school of thought is understood to be the range of thought of a specific group of

    researchers, which has crystallized within the field of strategic management (Brown,

    1993). In other words, a school of thought can be seen as an institutionalized

    paradigm. Besides reflecting on the variety of schools in strategy, we will also sketch

    out new promising directions in strategy research and practice. Although some

    strategy scholars have argued that the achieved multiformity in schools of thought

    signifies an enrichment of the research within the field of study (cf. Mahoney, 1993),

    other scholars from related disciplines complain about the lack of consistency and

    coherence (Camerer, 1985). In particular, they argue that the field of strategic

    management is extremely fragmented and that here is no agreement concerning the

    underlying theoretical dimensions nor the methodological approach to be employed.

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    In response, many strategists have advocated increased integration of theories within

    the strategy field.. Mintzberg (1990; 1998) has identified ten schools of strategy

    theory. Among the ten schools three namely the design school, planning school, and

    the Positioning school are prescriptive and the other seven namely the Entrepreneurial

    school and the Cognitive school, the Learning school , the Cultural school, the

    Environmental school and the configuration school are descriptive.

    I will like to give a brief introduction of all the ten schools in this paper,

    THE DESIGN SCHOOL

    This school is defined by the Havard business School General Management

    Group(1965) textbook Business Policy:Text and case. Conceptually this has a

    simple two-stage approach : (1) from close examination of a company,determine its

    internal capabilities(its strength and weakness ) and its external possibilities ( its

    opportunities and threats); then (2) Establish Fits between internal and external

    aspects.

    THE PLANNING SCHOOL

    The Planning school has or contains most of the assumptions of the Desighn school

    but the planning school as a whole fits into the overall trend of management and

    business practices that is formal procedures, formal thinking, formal practices and

    formal analysis. That is with the planning school distinct steps and procedures are

    followed.

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    THE POSITIONING SCHOOL

    The Positioning school largerly deprives from Micheals Porters two landmark books

    Competitive Strategy (1980) and Competitive Advantage (1985), sees strategic

    management as the process of selecting from a generic strategies and implementation

    as the following-through of business logic of that generic strategic. Most notable of

    this school has been one simple and revolutionary idea for better or for worst. It talk

    about strategies as a position in the economic marketplace-are desirable in any given

    industry: ones that can be defended against existing and the future competitors.

    THE ENTERPRENURIAL SCHOOL

    The entrepreneurial school ideology as (a) being based on a dialect worldview but (b)

    being based on the investment in specific uncertainties. The entrepreneurial school

    centers its process on the Chief Execution. That shifts strategies from precise design,

    planning or positions to visions or perspectives.

    THE COGNITIVE SCHOOL

    To understand how strategies are formed there is the need to probe into the minds of

    the strategist?

    Another, branch of this school has accepted a more constructivist and an interpretative

    approach of the strategy view or process.

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    companies in them can occupy, so the must therefore shape the strategies available to

    those companies or else be selected out. The environmental school deserves the

    attention of the details it throws on the demand of the environment.

    THE CONFIGURATION SCHOOL

    This school has two main sides (1) describes the organization and its surrounding

    context as configuration and (2) describes the strategy-making process as

    transformation.

    Currently this school enjoys the most extensive literature and practice.

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    INTRODUCTION

    Among the schools of thought seven are descriptive in nature whereas the Positioning,

    Design and Planning schools of thought of the strategic management schools of

    thought are prescriptive in approach.

    I am interested in the planning school because of its unique approach to strategy and

    its widespread nature it has earned for itself for the past years.

    In respect to this, I would like to take some time to review some of it related literature,

    examined its models and approaches, contributions and limitations and make some

    useful suggestions and recommendations for both strategists and scholars in a whole.

    In this paper, it is to be made clear that the main point is a comparison of the planning

    school as a prescription school against other prescription schools of thought

    Of all the schools talked about earlier, the planning school became a very important

    issues and challenged the other prescriptive schools. The planning school seems to

    be against the idea of strategies being a form of knowledge. By capturing the

    business desires in the form of programmatic goals and objectives and assuming that

    all other steps are infallible, strategy simply disappear. Hence this school denies the

    existence of uncertainty in any form and is almost a meta-strategy of placing trust in

    the formal planning process.

    This school marks the beginning of the point where business models really took off,

    by the applying of risk management techniques to abstracted statistical model of the

    firm.

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    Literature review

    This school has been dealt with or researched into by many distinctive scholars,

    researchers and academicians. Their literature they worked into conveyed around the

    main or center theme of this school.

    Over the past three decades, a variety of approaches, perspectives, models and

    methodologies have been developed and used as the basis for the planning school. At

    this point, I will have a look at some of the scholarly works and contribution in

    various forms which give association to the planning school.

    The Planning School views strategic formulation as a formal process in which a

    thorough set of procedures are followed from which derives a situation analysis in

    order to formulate the appropriate strategy.

    The need for a systematic process of strategic formulation which embraces the firms

    vision and creativity permitting a greater flexibility of strategic decisions in response

    to the environmental surprises has been supported by (Burgelman and Grove, 1996;

    Eisenhardt, 1989).

    The Ansoffian Strategic Planning model, which we will use as our candidate model

    representing the Planning School, adds dynamism to its functionality in three forms;

    Strategic Learning, Strategic Posture Management, and a robust system of

    environmental scanning, thus answering the critics claims of invariability and

    environmental predictability.

    The Planning School gains support from such advocates as (e.g. Ansoff, 1965;

    Andrews, 1971; Ansoff, Antoniou and Lewis, 2004; King & Cleland, 1978)

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    Simon (1993) states in his study that effective strategic planning calls for anticipating

    the future, scanning the environment for present and prospective competitors and

    novelties, and developing skills to generate alternatives in order to implement new

    plans.

    Planning Schools forecasting strengths enables it to identify threats and to address

    them well firm.

    Figure 1 Planned management

    Ansoffs Strategic Success Paradigm states that for optimal financial success, the

    aggressiveness of the firms strategy must match the environmental turbulence level

    (Ansoff, 1965). This portion of the Strategic Success Paradigm was borrowed from

    the concept of organization-environment matching found in the Requisite Variety

    Theorem by W.R. Ashby which states, in order to succeed in its environment, an

    organization must match the complexity of its response to the complexity of the

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    environment (Ashby, 1956). Ansoff considered formal, logical, comprehensive

    planning to be beneficial in all types of environmental conditions not simply high

    levels of discontinuity. Camillus supports Ansoff when he stated that the single most

    important common thread that runs through all synoptic formal approaches is the

    reliance on an analytical framework that is perceived to be logical and comprehensive

    (Camillus, 1982).

    In practice, the planning school begins with an objectives-setting stage followed by

    an external audit and an internal audit stage which achieved by relying on nard

    data. Whereas the design school of thought repackages dialectic knowledge as if

    these were science, the planning school tries to close the gap between traditional

    business theories and business practice and the new world of risk management. To

    do this it needs to abstract a model of how business work, and then use that to run the

    figures for different scenarios. Despite the claim formality of the preceeding stages,

    the methodology of objective-setting remains unspecified because it is inherently

    dialectic- a negotiation between hard data and the formal planning theories or

    processes.

    It seems that the Planning School is againstthe idea of strategies being a form of

    knowledge (perhaps as they are inherently uncertain). By capturing the business

    (supposed) desires in the form of programmatic goals & objectives, and assuming that

    all other steps are infallible, strategy simply disappears. Hence, this whole School

    denies the existence of uncertainty in any form, and is almost a meta-strategy of

    placing trust in the formal planning process.The diagram below shows the planning

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    school knowledge tree:

    Figure 2 the planning school knowledge tree

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    THE CONTENT.

    THE EVOLUTION OF THE PLANNING SCHOOL IN PERSPECTIVE.

    Strategy Formation as a formal ProcessThe difference of the planning school has to do with its approach to strategy

    formation. The evolution of the planning school can be tracedhow it came about,it

    models and approachesthrough several phases. These represent distinct bodies of

    literature that converged around the central themes of this school.

    The main focus of the planning school is its basis in prescriptive rather than

    descriptive. The prescriptive schools is contend that strategy is deliberate and should

    follow a formal planning pattern, whiles the descriptive school seeks to counter that

    argument by describing strategy as emergent pattern in action. According to the

    planning school, strategies emerge as a formal process.

    Both Planning and Design School emerged from similar mid-1960s academic

    business contexts, and so share many features. Their most significant difference is that

    the other Design School implicitly requires an imaginative step (to devise candidate

    strategies): however, what the scientistic business theorists behind the Planning.

    School really wanted was for business to function like a machine - and there was

    hence no room for creativity. Everything Must Be Automatic - There Must Be No

    Choice.

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    The Strategic Planning Model

    I was in a warm bed, and suddenly I m part of a plan. Woody Allen in Shadows

    and Fog

    There are various strategic planning models. Every textbook and strategic

    management consultants have their own model. It has mostly be reduced to the

    SWOT model, it is sort for because it has been divided into various steps and

    procedures with checklist and techniques and it give an inside into the setting of

    objectives in the front of organizations and the elaboration of their budget and

    operating plans on the back end. There are various diagrams for the elaboration of the

    SWOT model but for the context of this paper we will use the summarized diagram

    from Gorge Steiners book Ten Management Planning(1965) is in figure three

    below.

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    THE OBJECTIVES-SETTING STAGE. In place of thinking about values in the

    design school, proponents of the planning school developed extensive

    procedures to elaborate and, quantifying the goals of the organization to make sure if

    the layout plan have been achieve. Scholars over the years have made a distinct

    difference between those models that separate the goals from the objective and those

    that combine them.

    THE EXTERNAL AUDIT STAGE. Once the objectives have been set, the next two

    stages, as in the design school model, are to assess the external and the internal

    conditions of the organization. We refer to these as audits. A major factor in the

    auditing stage is the external environment or conditions. The external environment is

    the set of condition that are outside the firm which can affect its future conditions. To

    be able to know the future of the external environment the planner need to forecast

    well and if there is the inability to predict than you cannot plan that is there will be the

    inability to plan. Thus "predict and prepare" (Ackoff, 1983:59) became the motto of

    this school of thought. In order to control the environment various approaches ahs

    been used throughout the recent years ranging from simple to complex approaches

    most popular of them is the scenario building approach.

    THE INTERNAL AUDIT STAGE : regularly with the planning approach, the need

    to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses was also subjected to extensive

    de-composition. The assessment ofdistinctive, competences is necessarily judgmental,

    through the use of formalized technique generally gave way to simpler checklists and

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    tables of various kindswhat Jelinek and Amar have referred to as "corporate

    strategy by laundry

    THE STRATEGY EVALUTION STAGE: This stage, does the evaluation of the

    strategies. This process of evaluation has to do with the elaboration and qualification,

    techniques abound , ranging from simple ,early one which focus on the return on

    investment to lately develop techniques such as competitive strategy valution,risk

    analysis, the value curve, and the various methods or procedures corresponding

    with the calculation of shareholder value. Another assumption of the evaluation

    stage is that strategies are not evaluated so much as delineated , at a specific point in

    time. Strategies must be evaluated so that one can be selected.

    THE STRATEGY OPERATIONALIZATION STAGE. In this stage the planning

    process has pass through the restricted strategy formulation and open it self to

    implementation. Strategy formulation is open-ended, divergent process (in which

    imagination can flourish), whiles the implementation should be a more closed-ended

    and convergent. Because in the planning process strategy follows a more formalize

    structure the implementation provides a freedom too decompose, elaborate, and

    rationalize, down ever widening hierarchy. For an effective strategy implementation

    all strategies much be divided into sub strategies. As Steiner has stated: "All strategies

    must be broken down into sub strategies for successful implementation" (1979:177).

    In develop a hierarchy for the strategy implementation the different time perspective

    should be taken into consideration with a long time comprehensive strategic plan

    been on top followed by medium term plans which gives rise to shortterm operating

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    plans. Paralleling this is a hierarchy of objectives, a hierarchy of budgets, and a

    hierarchy of sub strategies (corporate, business, and functionalin this school usually

    seen as positions rather than perspectives), and a hierarchy of action programs.

    SCHEDULING THE WHOLE PROCESS. Following the process is not the only

    thing which is needed to b carried out there must be a schedule or timetable to outline

    the sequence in which they are carried out. Steiner in his book which he wrote in 1979

    says the front of his whole model an initial step , called the plan to plan

    model an initial step, called the "plan to plan

    Sorting Out the Hierarchies

    Putting all the all theses together you get a comprehensive strategic planning. The

    hierarchy model shows these four main components , one for objectives, one for

    budgets, one for strategies and one for programs. On one side are strategies and

    programs under the label action planning These are concerned with making decisions

    before the fact in order to drive behavior. On the other side are objectives and budgets

    labeled performance control, since these are designed to assess the result of the

    behavior after the fact

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    .Figure 3 The Four Planning Hierarchies

    Premises of the Planning School

    1. Strategies result from a controlled, conscious process of formal planning

    decomposed into distinct steps, each delineated by checklists and supported by

    techniques.

    2. Responsibility for that overall process rests with the chief executive in principle;

    responsibility for its execution rests with staff planners in practice.

    3. Strategies appear from this process full blown, to be made explicit so that they can

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    then be implemented through detailed attention to objectives, budgets, programs, and

    operating plans of various kinds.

    RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF THE PLANNING SCHOOL

    In recent times there has been newly developed model about the planning school

    which focus more on its application. It has been categorized into two main distinct

    that isscenario planning and strategic control.

    SCENARIO PLANNING

    The scenario is a tool in strategic formulation which has the assumption that if you

    cannot predict the future than you have to speculate upon variety of them you might

    open up your mind and perhaps find the right one. In scenario building they open the

    planners perspective to a variety of possible outcomes, so in a whole the exercise

    may be seen as one of a stimulating creative activity. In these respects, scenario

    building might be described

    asplanners at their best, rather than planning per se, because the intention is not to

    formalize strategy making so much as improve however managers do it.

    STRATEGIC CONTROL

    It is about keeping organization on their intended strategic track, what Simons

    referred to as the cybernetic view(1988). Strategic control is seen as the means of

    review and accept proposed control. In their bookStrategies and Styles: The Role of

    the Center in Managing Diversified Corporations, Goold and Campbell (1987) treat

    strategic control in this way, as one of three strategy-making styles available:

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    Strategic control has to broaden their scope beyond strategic planning. Stratefy needs

    to be effective and efficient, as it will be shown in the matrix below,

    Figure 4 Matrix on broadening strategic control

    PLANNING UNPLANNED TROUBLES

    Strategic planning has ran into trouble in the early 1980s when activity was cut back

    in many companies. Business week in 1984 reported that few of the strategies

    planners plan are implemented successfully. Igor Ansoff, wrote in 1977, twelve years

    after the publication of his key book Corporate Strategy, that "in spite of almost

    twenty years of existence of the strategic planning technology, a majority of firms

    today engage in the far less threatening and perturbing extrapolative long range

    planning Mintzberg (1994) documented the evidence that piled up against the

    process, including stories in the popular press and empirical findings from the

    research, which contains a long string of studies that set out to prove that strategic

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    planning tools.

    5. Planning processes failed to develop true strategic choices. Planners and

    executives rush into accepting a strategy that they seen satisfied instead of putting

    much effort to search for real ones , analyze and come up with alternative strategies

    before taking decisions

    6. Planning neglected the organizational and cultural requirements of strategy. In

    strategy formation the company ignores the internal environment which is critical to

    strategy implementation and focus much on the external environment.

    7. Single-point forecasting was an inappropriate basis for planning in an era of

    restructuring and uncertainty. Companies still tended to rely on single- point

    forecasting. Scenario-based planning was the exception rather than the rule. Planning

    assumptions which are base on a single future one which has a slight difference from

    the past trends of the organization.

    THE FALLACIES OF STRATEGIC PLANNING

    An expert has been defined as someone who avoids all the many pitfalls on his or her

    way to the grand fallacy. Here will consider the fallacies of strategic planning in three

    ways. Our critique is base on strategic planning not planning.

    THE FALLACY OF PREDETERMINATION. To engage in strategic planning, an

    organization must be able to forcast the course of its environment, control it and

    simply assume its stability

    Igor Ansoff wrote in Corporate Strategy in 1965 that "We shall refer to the period for

    which the firm is able to construct forecasts with an accuracy of, say, plus or minus 20

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    percent as the planning horizon of the firm. The truth of forecasting is that, in fact

    whiles certain repetitive patterns may be predictable. The forecasting of uncertainty

    such as the change of technology or technological breakthrough and prices increase.

    According to Spiro Makridakis, a leading expert in the field, "practically impossible."

    And prepare to react to it accordingly. The only hope for planning is to accept the

    present trends and hope for the best in the future

    THE FALLACY OF DETACHMENT, Marianne Jelinek developed the interesting

    point in her book, called Institutionalizing and Innovation,that strategic planning

    has been to the executive suite. It is through administrative systems that planning and

    policy are made possible, because the systems capture knowledge about the t a s k .

    Therefore manager must manage by remote control. The trick, of course, is to get the

    relevant information up there, so that those senior managers "on high" can be

    informed about the consequences of those details "down below," without having to

    enmesh themselves in them. And that is supposed to be accomplished by "hard

    data"quantitative aggregates of the detailed "facts" about the organization and its

    context, neatly packaged for immediate use.

    THE SOFT UNDERBELLY OF HARD DATA

    The belief that strategic managers and their planning systems can be detached from

    the subject of their efforts is predicated on one fundamental assumption: that they can

    be informed in a formal way.

    The world information must be reduced to a firms data, hardened and aggregated so

    as to be supplied in a more simple form. In other words, systems must do it, whether

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    they go by the name of management information systems which deals with hard data

    proves to have a decidedly soft underbelly

    I.Hard information is often limited in scope, lacking richness and often failing to

    encompass important noneconomic and no quantitative factors. Information which

    are important to strategy planning never does become hard data. Therefore manager

    spend time to create their own information system putting together a network of

    contacts and informers of all kinds

    2. Much hard information is too aggregated for effective use in strategy making. The

    obvious solution for a manager overloaded with information and pressed for the time

    necessary to process it is to have the information aggregated. Often is not the great

    deal of information lost in aggregate but rather the essence .

    3.Much hard information arrives too late to be of use in strategy making. Information

    takes time to "harden": time is required for trends and events and performance to

    appear as "facts," more time for these facts to be aggregated into reports, even more

    time if these reports have to be presented on a predetermined schedule, strategy

    making has to be dynamic, reacting to unfolding events, manager does not need to

    waste time for the information to be harden before they act whiles competitor capture

    the minds of valuable customers.

    4. Finally, a surprising amount of hard information is unreliable. Soft information is

    supposed to be unreliable, subject to all kinds of biases. Hard information, in contrast,

    is supposed to be concrete and precise; it is, after all, transmitted and stored

    electronically. Something is lost in the process of quantification before it is been

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    Figure 5 The formalization edge

    CAPITAL BUDGETING VERSUS STRATEGY FORMATION

    Capital budgeting is an established procedure by which unit managers (division heads,

    functional managers to approve cost and benefits so that management can

    compare and rate them and accept what the organization is able to fund.

    One of the early studiesan intensive probe into the process in one large divisional

    zed firmfound that the senior management had a propensity to approve all the

    projects that reached its level. "The important question," wrote the author, "was

    whether that group of officers which possessed the power to move proposals through

    the funding process chose to identify a particular proposal for sponsorship," because

    once that happened, proposals had more or less free passage (Bower, 1970)

    In recent study Marsh et al. looked carefully at three firms considered "sophisticated"

    in their use of capital budgeting, and found all kinds of problems. The procedure

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    manuals "proved quite hard to locate!"

    "Hard-to-qualify costs and benefits were excluded from the financial analysis."

    Broms and Gahmberg found evidence of capital projects in some Finnish nd Swedish

    firms "regularly miss[ing] the mark" (e.g., requiring 25 percent are turn on investment

    while consistently getting about 7 percent). These authors referred to "this

    self-deception," these "mantras" as "socially accepted fact

    Capital budgeting, therefore, appears to be a formal means not to plan strategy but to

    put up a form of structure that considers the projects and to inform senior

    management about them. Capital budgeting take the place of the context of existing

    strategics. Capital budgeting is a disjointed process, or, more to the point, a

    disjointing one

    Figure 7 Planners around strategy making

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    THE GRAND FALLACY OF "STRATEGIC PLANNING." Thus we arrive at the

    grand fallacy of strategic planning, a composite, in fact, of the three fallacies already

    discussed. Because analysis is not synthesis, strategic planning has never been

    strategy making. Analysis may follow and elaborate synthesis, by decomposing and

    formalizing its consequences. Analysis cannot be substituted for synthesis. We can

    conclude that strategy planning has been misnamed rather should have been called

    strategy programming.

    The Context and Contribution of the Planning School

    There is, however, no need to throw out the strategic planner baby with the strategic

    planning bathwater. Planners has a very important role to play in strategy formulation.

    It can be seen in figure 6 above.

    THE UPSIDE OF TOOLISM

    1.Every tool carries a set of strengths and weaknesses. Success requires

    understanding the full effectsand side effectsof each tool, then creatively and

    using them at the right time

    2. Tools should be judged by their utility, not by their novelty.

    3. Tools exist for the benefit of people, not vice versa. Management tools are credited

    by their advocates with saving corporationsalmost as loudly as they are blamed by

    their critics for destroying them. The truth is neither the people makes company fail or

    succeed. Planners can also act as catalysts, not to promote formal planning as some

    kind of imperative, but to encourage whatever form of strategic behavior makes sense

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    for a particular organization at a particular point in time when necessary planner can

    carry out formal planning to as a means of program and when strategies come up can

    be codify, elaborated and translated into ad hoc programs and routine plans and

    budgets and use them on purpose of communication and control. Some of the roles

    involved are analytical in nature. That is organization must be able to distinguish

    between left-handed and right handed planners, encourage creativity and creative

    thinking. The right-handed planners are mostly concerned with more formal kinds of

    strategy analysis and particularly with the strategic programming of clear strategies

    CASE STUDY

    THE TOYOTA AUTOMIBLE COMPANY

    Evolution of Toyota

    The roots of the Toyota Manufacturing company can be traced back to Sakichi

    Toyoda, a tinkerer and inventor, who lived around the late 1800s in a farming

    community outside of Nagoya. As a boy, Toyoda learned carpentry from his father

    and started designing and building wooden spinning machines. In 1894 he began to

    make manual looms that were relatively cheaper and more efficient than existing

    looms. Toyoda developed an automatic power looms with the motive to relieve his

    grandmother and other friends from the hard spinning and weaving work.

    Among his inventions was a special mechanism to automatically stop a loom

    whenever a thread broke. This invention led to the concept of jidoka-automation with

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    a human touch.

    If Sakichi Toyoda put his mark on the industrial world through loom making,

    Just-In-Time was his son Kiichiro Toyoda's contribution. His ideas were influenced

    materialize by a study trip to Ford's plants in Michigan(U.S.A) to see the automobile

    industry Kiichiro was also inspired by the U.S. supermarket system of products been

    replace us its finishes from the shelves.

    Toyota now (1900-date)

    It is admitted that there is something unique about Toyota. The giant Japanese

    automobile manufacturer company recently has the fastest product development

    process in the world. New cars and trucks take 12 months or even less to design,

    while competitors typically require two to three years. Toyota has phenomenal quality

    levels that rivals can only imagine of.

    Toyota has turned operational excellence into a strategic weapon not merely through

    tools and quality improvement methods but a deeper business philosophy rooted in

    understanding of people and what motivates them. Its success is ultimately based on

    its ability to develop leaders, build teams, and nurture a supportive culture, to devise

    strategy, to build deep supplier relationships, and to maintain a well planned

    organization policies and structure

    Toyota invented Lean Production in the 1940s and 50s. The company focused on

    eliminating wasted time and material from every step of the production process (from

    raw materials to finished goods).The result was a fast and flexible process that gives

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    the customers what they want, at the right time and in the right quality that the

    customers want at an affordable cost. Toyota improved production by:

    What Made Toyota TheWorlds Best Manufacturer?

    After the Second World War Toyota develop a Toyota production system to help

    produce a variety of vehicles on the same assemble line for its customers unlike its

    major competitor GM and Ford who depended much on mass production and

    economics ofscale. Toyotas market was very small but it had to produce a variety of

    vehicles on the same assembly line to satisfy customers. The solution: making the

    operations flexible. This resulted in the birth of TPS.

    TPS borrowed some of its ideas from the United States. The core idea of the Just in

    Time (JIT) system came from the concept of the pull-system, which was inspired by

    American supermarkets. In the pull system, individual items are replaced as each item

    begins to run low on the shelf.

    Applied to Toyota, it means that the first step in the process is not completed until the

    second step uses the materials or supplies from Step 1.

    At Toyota, every step of the manufacturing process uses Kanban to signal to the

    previous step when its part needs to be replenished.

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    Toyotas unique problem solving plan;

    Level of Problem Corresponding Level of Countermeasure

    There is a puddle of oil on the shop floor. Clean up the oil.

    Because the machine is leaking oil. Fix the machine.

    Because the gasket has deteriorated. Replace the gasket.

    Because we bought gaskets made of inferior material. Change gasket

    specifications.

    Because we got a good deal (price) on those gaskets. Change purchasing policies.

    Because the purchasing agent gets evaluated on short-term cost savings. Change

    the evaluation policy for purchasing agents.

    The company, aside from broadly defining customers to include internal and external

    clients, Toyota also adoptsa well formal structured plan to problem solving, which

    became a cornerstone for continuous improvement

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    fit into their business situations and apply them.

    I finally conclude that no single school holds the key to business success, even not the

    Planning school which have discuss in this paper

    Nevertheless they hold useful tools that could aid strategists in various situations and

    conditions. Implies that, they are subjective and conditionalitys so the crucial aspect

    is left with the smartness of the planner or the strategist. After all, what might be good

    for the goose might not be good for the gander! In other words what might be good

    for one company made not be good for another?

    .

    .

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