Does the Regional Myth Still Hold? An Interim Report

This paper introduces our ongoing analysis of auto component development data obtained from Nishiguchi's research sponsored by MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP). The main results of this paper can be found in the section of Research Results where a regression analysis of auto component development productivity is conducted. There are three major findings: 1. Contrary to the general perception, neither component type nor generally accepted project characteristic governs variations of productivity among auto component projects in our study. 2. Even after correcting for component type and differences in project characteristics, there still remains a strong regional gap in productivity between Japanese and Western samples (North America and Europe). 3. Among Japanese suppliers, a counterintuitive relationship between person hours and unique parts ratio was revealed: There is a tendency that person hours decreases as unique parts ratio increases. This relationship should not occur without continuous accumulation of knowledge on the auto components. Nor is it explained solely by a cross-functional feature of organizations.The International Motor Vehicle Program; INSEAD and its Euro-Asia Centr

Twisting Optomechanical Cavity

Mechanical rotation and oscillation have far lower frequencies than light, and thus the mechanical motion and light are not coupled to each other conventionally. In this paper, we propose that a torsional mechanical oscillation of an optical cavity can be coupled to the optical modes when a birefringent medium is introduced in the cavity. There are two kinds of modes inside the birefringent cavity, ordinary ray and extraordinary ray modes. Twisting the cavity mixes these two modes and changes the electromagnetic energy stored inside the cavity. We derive torsional optomechanical Hamiltonian by quantising the cavity electromagnetic energy and the torsional mechanical oscillation. We also analyse photon polarisation dynamics in the optomechanical cavity by the quantum master equation approach to find the decoherence induced by the torsional oscillation