Komatsu Case Study

Case Analysis Coach (Komatsu)

I. Summary of the case. Komatsu, the largest Japanese corporation that manufactures heavy equipment, was established in 1921 as a specialized producer of mining equipment. In this case, the company had been through a lot of circumstances, some of them had raised the company status and some of them not. Initially, when the Japanese government allowed the foreign investors to roll and share the market in the region. In the other hand, before that situation happened, Komatsu was held a market share of more than 50%, despite the low quality of its equipment at that time. In my opinion, most of the changes that took place within the organizational structure and strategies of the company over the years had caused

Tanaka was the right manager who defensed and challenged all challenges and difficulties that faced the company and placed defense above anything else in his management policy. Also, he was the one who can handle the persistence of high-yen environment. Nogawa`s behavior on the yen situation was not enough to solve the crisis, despite he responded to grow the initial and external pressures for internationalization, and gave the approval to establish two important overseas plants. On the other side, Tanaka prevailed in the market, and raised the price above 10%. With that increase Komatsu gained a significant profit.

“Sharing is caring”. Nogawa’s centralized led him to inability to work as a preneurship, and taking the decisions with the employees with him. Every thing was under his authority, and he just gave the orders without sharing the concepts, this was one of the most important reasons that caused the failure in the era of his

Operational problems. Back to 1985 when Nogawa rejected and refused the shareholders and their proposals outright, followed that rejection a tide of problems. However, Tanaka responded quickly to the crisis competitive situation in the domestic market before turning to the larger strategic goals of internationalization. I believe what Tanake have made to the company is an intelligent behavior and he act perfectly to prevent the problem caused before he placed as a precedent of Komatsu. Another fact, I would strongly recommend is to make a new pricing sales policies, and eliminate the loss and competitors at the same time.

C. Strategic problems.

Each entrepreneur has to have the full feature, and he or she must know how to plan, take what he or she does seriously, and take the risk. Personally, I believe that a company must always be innovative, and that wont happen if the entrepreneur using a bad strategy that may lead the whole organization down. Smart manager how knows and learned from the past and from old heads. Therefore, the organization will keep its success to the end.

V. Case questions

-How feasible was the new strategy?

- This was to be the company’s major globalization task, and Katada predicted that by the year