Spatial Concentration in the U.S. Auto Supplier Industry

The Close but Adversarial Model of Supplier Relations in the Us Auto Industry

While cooperative buyer-supplier relations are an important source of sustainable competitive advantage, non-cooperative behavior persists widely. This paper tests a model incorporating non-cooperative behavior within a context of formal commitment, using data from the US auto industry. This ‘close, but adversarial’ model appears to be reasonably well supported by the data, suggesting that even...

Supplier Relations and Performance in the Auto Industry: European-Japanese-US Comparisons of the Voice/Exit Choice

This paper analyses data from surveys of 1400 first-tier automotive suppliers in Europe, the United States and Japan, conducted as part of MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program. The paper shows that the nature of supplier relations in the three regions is converging in some respects towards closely-linked voice relationships. The diffusion of voice relationships in Europe and the USA appear...

1 Governing Competitive Supplier Relations : New Auto - Industry

Does “Just-in-time” Mean “Right-next- door”? Evidence from the Auto Industry on the Spatial Concentration of Supplier Net- works

Lean manufacturing was pioneered by Toyota Motor Company in Japan during the 1950s. It has since become the standard for many manufacturing companies in Japan and around the world. This production system tries to improve on the type of mass production systems that have been prominent in the post-war period. Instead of organizing production according to a pre-set schedule it operates on the prem...

Modularization in the Auto Industry: Interlinked Multiple Hierarchies of Product, Production, and Supplier Systems

This paper analyzes the modularization in the world auto industry. The modularization in the industry has involved architectural changes in product, production, and supplier systems with each region (Japan, Europe and the U.S.A.) emphasizing different purposes and aspects. As an attempt to understand such multi-faceted, complex processes coherently, this paper proposes a conceptual framework th...