Sustainable management for small R&D-oriented manufacturing firms

Despite the fact that small to medium sized enterprises play an important role in the Japanese economy, these companies have severe problems with respect to corporate sustainability. We have investigated a small company called “Haneron” in detail. This company was founded as a technology oriented manufacturing company and it has survived more than 30 years. The company developed strength in the area of mixed technology of analog, digital and mechatronics in the early stage of start-up. The case study shows that so-called diversification in product/market expansion grid is effective if existing technology is applied to new products. Also, the case study shows that the strategy to keep corporate size relatively small and to change business model in response to environmental and market changes is a key factor for the organization to survive. An engineering management approach for corporate sustainability was discussed and a hypothetical model to describe organization survival was proposed.