Narrative 18-1 In Recent Years, Japanese Companies Such as Mitsubishi, NEC, Fujitsu

Narrative 18-1
In recent years, Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi, NEC, Fujitsu, and Sony began turning to North America to manufacture Japanese products. While Sony, Panasonic, and other Japanese giants still excel at cranking out high-quality consumer electronics products-such as camcorders and TVs-by the millions, it's a different story in industries with short product cycles and factories that must build what customers order instead of churning out products in anticipation of demand. Japan's great strength-repetitive manufacturing-is becoming its greatest weakness. This production-on-demand form of management cannot depend on JIT. Instead, the North American companies rely on raw-in-process inventory, or RIP. RIP calls for keeping a reasonable quantity of varied raw materials or components on hand to meet changing customer demand.
-Refer to the Narrative 18-1.What was present in North American companies that were taking over Japanese operations?

A) The North American companies are able to make effective use of kanbans.
B) Because North American companies are more concerned about stockouts, they are less efficient.
C) Both the Japanese and the North American companies rely on independent demand systems to determine inventory requirements.
D) The North American companies have higher holding costs.