A customer-supplier relationship: evidences from studies of the auto industry

Abstract

Companies have used new practices of relationship between customers and suppliers in order to improve their supply chains, mainly due to the changes in the global competitive market. The automobile industry, in especial, has suffered important transformations in the relationship among the companies that operate in the supply chain obtaining inputs, components, groups, modules and necessary systems to manufacture a vehicle. This paper is a theoretical research, based on a review of the literature and its objective is to study the models of relationships between customer & supplier and to present case study of these relationships in the Japanese, European, American and Brazilian automobile industries. The aim of this paper is to contribute for the theoretical development on the characterization of models of relationship between assemblers and suppliers.