Transition of the concept of total optimization in Japanese companies

In recent years, there have been many efforts in technology development, supply chain management, and digital transformation aimed at total optimization. This paper analyzes the context in which the terms total optimization and partial optimization have been used in Japanese companies, based on the frequency of their mentions and their trends in newspaper articles. The issue of total optimization has been covered by newspapers since the late 1980s and has been discussed for many years along with its solutions such as supply chain management (SCM), business process reengineering (BPR), and information and communication technology (ICT). The fact that the total optimization issue has continued to attract attention suggests that formal organization has not yet been established. While there has been a focus on promoting communication such as cross functional collaboration and integration, and the introduction and utilization of information technology, there has not yet been enough focus on what optimization is for in the first place, and the establishment a) Faculty of Business Administration, Seikei University, 3-3-1 Kichijoji-kitamachi, Musashino-shi, Tokyo, JAPAN, mfukuzawa@bus.seikei.ac.jp The author declares there are no competing interests. A part of this article was presented at the ABAS Conference 2021 Autumn (Fukuzawa, 2021). © 2021 Mitsuhiro Fukuzawa. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0 (Attribution 4.0 International) license. The CC BY 4.0 license permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Annals of Business Administrative Science 20 (2021) 269–282 https://doi.org/10.7880/abas.0211118a Received: November 18, 2021; accepted: December 6, 2021 Published in advance on J-STAGE: December 10, 2021