Architectural Strategy in Complex and Large Products: A Case of Shipbuilding Industry in Japan and Korea
Products tend to be more complex or integral when constraints become stricter. Such product design and production require coordination-intensity. From an evolutionary view, many Japanese companies have high levels of organization with multi-skilled labors, so are good at coordination-intensive products. However, they do not always have competitiveness in this field. Only a few researchers have approached this issue, so this article will examine it by using a case study of shipbuilding as a complex and large product industry. Here, the concepts of complexity and largeness are distinctive. From design information view of artifacts, complexity relates to design information, largeness relates to medium. Shipbuilding is an advanced industry facing environmental and safety constraints. Moreover, it has encountered several periods of crisis and recovery. From this analysis using the complexity and largeness axis, many Japanese firms have a competitive advantage in the simple-small category, while Korean firms succeed in the complex-large category. It is a result of an architectural strategy for survival.