The shipbuilding industry is an industry which deals in international goods in single and borderless global market. competing in quality, delivery time and price. In 1956the Japanese shipbuilding industry stood first in the world in terms of completed tonnage. outstripping the United Kingdom. Since then it has constructed and supplied nearly onehalf of the ships newly built in the world every year to shipping circles. However, in view of the sharp increase in the yen's value during these ten years since the Plaza Accord, the industry has felt deep misgivings about its price competitiveness, one of its strong points. The yen-dollar rate which was 240 yen to the U. S. dollar in April of 1985. rose to 160 yen in1990 and finally reached 80 yen in April of 1995 as shown in Fig 1. Under these circumstances, the real price of new ships was far below the reasonable price level attainable the Japanese shipbuilding industry through its cost-rationalization. Although the level of yen to the U. S. dollar has been narrowly regained and maintained throughout most of these past six months, it does not seem that the tendency towards a strong-yen will decline in the near future. As a result, it will be extremely difficult to expect the Japanese shipbuilding industry to recover its former prosperity unless the yen's value becomes much weaker.
From a technical perspective, the large number of serious accidents that have occurred in recent years has necessitated a careful reevaluation of ship safety. Foremost of these incidents have been structural failures of large bulk carriers apparently due to poor maintenance, and the stranding of large tankers which could easily result in damage to the environment.
Under such conditions, the Japanese shipbuilding industry must make every effort to reform its structure through continued rationalization in terms of even greater cost reductions and technical innovation in order to fulfill the expectations of shipping circles worldwide as before and to meet its obligations to supply needed ships for the global fleet. I believe an "information-intensive" approach is one of the keys to effectively addressing this
