The Historical and Geographical Changes of the Supplier System of Japan’s Electronics Industries: A Case Study of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

In the literature on manufacturing supplier systems, especially concerning the relationships between large plants and their subcontractors, there are a few studies, but they need to be more sophisticated. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical and geographical changes in the corporate spatial divisions of labor in Japan, and to elucidate both the formation process and the restructuring process of localized sub-contracting linkages from the perspective of the suppliers’ system. The case study draws on Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. which has the most marketing power in Japan’s electronics industries and whose localized linkages have been built in many regions in Japan. From a management point of view, the sub-contracting relationships were organized by each plant, and the organizational changes affected localized sub-contracting linkages