Target Analysis: Cost, Quality or Both?

In the increasingly competitive environment of the nineties, considerable attention has been paid to cost and quality issues. Though, traditionally, improvement in quality meant increased costs and was associated with reduced productivity, more recent research treats them as complementary characteristics. In this article, K R Balachandran and Bin Srinidhi argue that the target analysis approach which combines cost and quality issues in a complementary manner can help achieve the strategic objectives of the firm. Data from NMMC, a subsidiary of Nissan Motor Corporation located in the US, have been used to describe the process of implementation of this approach.