As mentioned in the previous section, traditional (but after the 1950’s) Japanese-style management and
Japanese-style business process modeling methods worked well and proved their effectiveness. However, the
environment that Japanese companies are facing has changed drastically. For example, a decrease in sales due
to shrinking of the domestic market requires companies to make efforts to reduce costs in order to maintain
profits. Some companies have had to transfer production overseas in order to reduce labor costs. Because of
this change in the environment, companies have had to adapt in ways such as the following: