It is reported that the General Motors Corporation has begun a major renovation of the main full-size-car plant of its Buick Division, Buick City, Flint, Michigan, in order to boost productivity, and that, as part of this plan, it is attempting to induce its parts manufacturers to concentrate the location of their supply base around this plant so that parts can be supplied via the "just-in-time" method.1 This report also informs us that GM invites the cooperation of Japanese parts makers and that, in January 1983, the Japan-GM Cooperative Association was formed, of which there are fifty-five corporate members as of June 1983. The report succinctly demonstrates that the parts procurement method and the approach of organizing parts makers that the Japanese automobile manufacturers have developed have become the object of learning by a representative car maker in the United States, and that the effort is being made to transplant them to the United States.
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Banri Asanuma (1985) studied this question.