Since the 1960s, the world's automobile producers have been borrowing, adapting, or inventing solutions to problems. Japanese management techniques and ideas have been much studied and copied, particularly the model of "lean production." In this book, experts from many different countries compare and contrast the strategic and organizational solutions of the major producers in North American, Europe, and Japan over the past three decades.

Japanese carmaker Honda has pioneered a new breed of multinational enterprise - true manufacturing at the global scale. Honda has been a leader in confounding predictions that Japan's carmakers would and could never transfer their success abroad, and that a wholesale 'Japanization' of the west would be provoked if they did. The book covers manufacture, research and development, sourcing of components, human resources and labour relations, collaboration with western firms, political controversy, and the role of concepts and ideas, in Japan, North America, and Europe.