Analysis:
What is the value chain?
Theoretically, the concept of "value chain" was put forward by Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School, in 1985.
Porter believes that "every enterprise is an entity that carries out various activities in the process of designing, producing, selling, sending and assisting its products." All these activities can be represented by the value chain. "The value creation of an enterprise consists of a series of activities, which can be divided into two categories: basic activities and auxiliary activities. Basic activities include internal activities.
Diligence, production and operation, external logistics, marketing and sales, service, etc. ; Auxiliary activities include procurement, technology development, human resource management and enterprise infrastructure. These different but interrelated production and operation activities constitute a dynamic process of creating value, that is, value chain.
Value chain is ubiquitous in economic activities. There is an industry value chain between upstream and downstream related enterprises, and the relationship between business units within the enterprise constitutes the enterprise value chain, and there are also value chain links among business units within the enterprise. Every value activity in the value chain will have an impact on how much value the enterprise can finally realize.
Porter's "value chain" theory reveals that the competition between enterprises is not only the competition of a certain link, but the competition of the whole value chain, and the comprehensive competitiveness of the whole value chain determines the competitiveness of enterprises. In Porter's words: "The value in consumers' mind is composed of a series of specific activities and profits of enterprises in material and technology. When you compete with other companies, it is actually the competition of many internal activities, not the competition of one activity. " (Shenzhen Business Daily reporter Yuan Lei comprehensively arranged)
Author: Yuan Lei, a reporter from Shenzhen Business Daily.
SZ news/SZ * * */* * * * * * * * * * */ca 960 122
Carlos Maglios, Director-General of UNIDO: Local industries are embedded in global value chains and production networks.
Shenzhen Business Daily May 3, 20041Sunday 04:29
What is the emerging enterprise environment faced by global enterprises today? Perhaps the most appropriate answer is the high globalization of production. Rapid technological progress, trade and investment liberalization and the implementation of international rules and regulations have promoted the gradual extension of global value chains and production networks. This global business scenario has increased opportunities to increase income and provide employment, but it has also brought some challenges.
Participating in global value chains and global production networks will help producers in developing countries to make more foreign exchange in the global market, diversify their export products, and more importantly, master new technologies and improve production efficiency. However, this also makes the macroeconomic and industrial environment of many countries face greater competitive pressure, forcing them to improve their physical infrastructure and business environment. In addition, small enterprises and new enterprises generally have no comparative advantage and are more vulnerable to the pressure of fierce competition.
Asian countries and global value chains
More and more Asian countries and their producers are participating in global value chains and global production networks, thus providing * * * goods and services for a larger market. This is especially true in East Asia and China. The discussion here involves three sectors: textiles, electronic products and automobiles. They have typical significance in global value chain and production network.
In the textile industry, the migration of some links in the whole manufacturing process appeared in the 1950s, when it was transferred from North America and Western Europe to Japan. Then, in 1970s and 1980s, Hongkong, Taiwan Province Province and South Korea became garment production centers. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, most of the world's textiles and clothing were transferred to Chinese mainland and some Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
By the end of 1990s, some South Asian countries had entered this category, while the shares of Hongkong, Taiwan Province Province and South Korea were declining. The proportion of Chinese mainland and Southeast Asian countries in American clothing imports increased from 8% in 1983 to 1 2% in 2006, and China increased from 8% to 14%. Based on the garment export value of US$ 65.438+0 billion, the world's major export countries and regions with 654.38+0.980 are Hongkong, South Korea, Taiwan Province Province, Chinese mainland and the United States. By 1990, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, India and Pakistan will be added. By 2000, the Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka also entered the ranks.
In the electronics industry, Asian countries participated in the global production system in 1960s, when Japanese companies issued licenses to China, Taiwan Province Province, Hongkong and South Korea to initially produce transistor radios and hand-held calculators. Since the late 1960s, enterprises in the United States and Western Europe have moved labor-intensive semiconductor assembly processes to Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand. Since then, the participation of Asian countries and regions in global production has been deepening.
For example, until the early 1980s, the production of hard drives was carried out in the United States. Now, Southeast Asia dominates the production of this product, and its products account for 70% of the global total. As a global leader in hard disk production, 64% of Seagate's 22 global manufacturers were located in Asia in 2000. The proportion of Asian output in the company's total output was 35% in 1990 and rose to 6 1% in 1995. In the same period, the proportion of Asian employees in the total number of Seagate employees increased from 70% to 85%.
As for the automobile industry, many developing countries have adopted the industrialization policy of import substitution since 1950s to increase the domestic production share of this industry. Since 1990s, trade liberalization has changed and formed the international production organization of this industry. Nowadays, the automobile industry is considered as one of the most global industries, and its manufacturing technology and products are widely distributed all over the world. Although the number of Asian countries participating in this division of labor is still limited in absolute terms, its trend is on the rise. The share of ASEAN countries in global automobile and bicycle sales increased from 1.7% in 1990 to 4% 5438+0 in 2006. East Asian countries, especially Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and China, although their respective shares are not large, their markets are expanding rapidly, which is the main factor to promote the expansion of the global automobile industry in the 1990s.
The evaluation of the above three areas also shows that China is increasingly participating in the global production process, especially in the labor-intensive sectors in the value chain. This has brought great competitive pressure to manufacturers in other developing countries, and triggered debates among the public and academic circles: Will China's accession to the WTO seriously damage the competitive position of some countries? If not, how will it affect the industrial division of labor in other developing countries, especially China's neighbors?
Most scholars and business people believe that countries threatened by China's industrial competitiveness should regard China's rapid economic growth as a new opportunity rather than a threat to their own development. There are two levels of policy suggestions, one is the industrial level, and the other is the national economy level. At the industrial level, countries should attach importance to the application of medium and high technology in manufacturing. This requires upgrading education to improve technology and skills to improve production efficiency, and establishing organic forward and backward links between local industries and foreign industries.
At the level of national economy, it is very important to develop the factors that contribute to the upgrading of industrial structure. This includes improving infrastructure (inland ports, export processing zones, financial incentives), labor law reform, functional and institutional reform, and establishing or expanding interregional trade groups. In fact, foreign investors are also willing to repay these policy efforts, because they don't want to rely solely on China or continue to rely on China after a certain limit, because it involves strategic risks.
Therefore, under the strategy of risk and investment diversification, the improvement of industrial and investment policies in Asia or other regions will help attract foreign investors. In short, these policies will help these countries reduce the impact of investors' diversification of investment in China; Secondly, it has also increased its exports to China.
At the same time, we should also see that China itself is likely to enhance its competitive advantage and improve its efficiency by upgrading its technological content. In this way, China will increase the production of more advanced products and climb up the value chain. In this way, for the countries concerned, China may only affect those countries that have not been able to upgrade their industries and technologies to strengthen their competition with China.
The improvement brought by participating in the global value chain.
Participating in global value chain and global production network can enable enterprises to improve the efficiency of a single production activity, or change the structure of a package of activities (through joint or expansion to another network), or expand to another value chain as a whole. From this, we can see four improvements:
First, process improvement, that is, the optimization of internal processes, is superior to its competitors (such as reducing inventory costs or losses); Or improve the relevance within the value chain (such as multiple, small-scale timely delivery).
Two, product improvement, that is, the improvement of product quality or performance-price ratio, and more sensitive to the market (faster than competitors to introduce new products to the market). This is related to the improvement of the internal product development process and the connection with other nodes in the value chain.
Third, function promotion, by changing the internal activity structure to enhance added value.
Fourth, the improvement of the value chain, enterprise activities to a higher value chain transfer. For example, Taiwan Province Province shifted from producing transistor radios to producing calculators, televisions, computer monitors and notebook computers, and now it is turning to producing WAP mobile phones.
Two different value chains
According to research, there are two kinds of global value chains. One was pulled by the buyer and the other by the manufacturer. This difference is worth analyzing, because the dynamic mechanism, that is, the relationship and interaction between them are different. The opportunities brought by the two are also different.
Generally speaking, convenient technology often promotes the value chain pulled by buyers, while the value chain pulled by producers needs to master difficult technology, because it involves close cooperation and proprietary technology.
In the buyer-driven value chain, big buyers can establish these value chains and networks because they have core competitiveness in brand and marketing. They are increasingly organized to strengthen coordination and control of production, design and marketing activities to meet the needs of target markets in developed countries, developing countries and countries in transition.
This value chain combines typical labor-intensive industries, which are closely related to developing countries, such as agricultural products and food industries, textiles, clothing and shoes, toys, furniture and other industries. For brand manufacturers (such as Nestle's food and beverage value chain), the most important thing is to get as much value as possible from product R&D and marketing. Therefore, they are very concerned about maintaining brand value and preventing counterfeiting by protecting intellectual property rights. Their strong market position comes from the sum of global brands and brands that develop regional markets.
In the producer-driven value chain, the main producers in this chain control key technologies, which is very important for the value chain to adapt to the final product market. They coordinate various value chains and networks to help suppliers and their customers improve efficiency. This chain mainly exists in high-tech industries such as automobiles, electronic products and communications.
Generally speaking, most producers in developing countries are part of the labor-intensive buyer-driven chain. Some newly industrialized countries and regions in East Asia are exceptions. As these countries and regions are increasingly involved in the industries of capital goods and intermediate goods, they are shifting from buyer-driven chains to producer-driven chains (automobiles, electronics and communications, etc.). ).
Industrial policy and manufacturing competitiveness;
Asian experience
Efficient supply chain management requires not only transportation infrastructure with superior geographical location, but also flexible import and export procedures. The success of East Asian economy is characterized by efforts to improve competitiveness. According to the Competitive Industry Index (CIP) of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, from 1980 to 2000, the index of most East Asian countries and regions continued to improve except Hong Kong and Japan. The so-called "driving force", that is, structural factors, has been improved and improved in East Asian countries and regions in the past two decades. These factors include broad technology (domestic technology and foreign technology introduced through foreign investment and patent licensing), infrastructure, human skills (especially technical education) and so on.
Another * * * is that they are good at supporting intermediary organizations that can support enterprises. For example, both Singapore and Malaysia have set up investment promotion agencies, while China has set up many science and technology development zones to provide a dynamic environment for enterprise development. Singapore Productivity and Standards Bureau cooperates with public and private enterprises to ensure that enterprises produce high-quality products in accordance with national, international and industry standards. Taiwan Province Province has also set up quality supervision institutions to ensure that the products produced by enterprises meet the export quality requirements.
The experience of Asian countries and regions is twofold. First of all, the formulation of industrial policies varies from country to country. All countries and regions have formulated their own strategies and decided to adopt supporting institutional measures and systems to cooperate with industrial strategies. In this regard, it is essential to attach importance to national innovation and learning systems. Secondly, in order to improve the competitiveness of the industry, it is also very important to support the factors that drive the improvement of competitiveness.