Supply Chain Collaborations changing the face of Indian Automobile

The emphasis given on improving supply chains in organizations both by companies and academia in past two decades shows the growing importance of integrating manufacturing and marketing processes of organizations. In the recent years supply networks are being recognized as strategic tools that enable companies to fight global competitive battles. The paper studies the nature of supplier collaborations and technology’s role in improving coordination across the supplier networks. The paper provides an insight into supplier networks of Indian automobile companies and presents some cases to demonstrate this

The value chain approach imposes increased expectations on logistics management

As business organisations move toward network structures, and virtual models replace vertical organisations (or begin to become part of them), it is time to consider the role of logistics management in light of these developments. The value chain / value creation system (VCS) has introduced a radical view concerning the ownership and use of assets, processes and capabilities; ownership has been replaced by access and collaboration. This working paper considers the challenges confronting logistics management and explores the ways in which logistics management may become involved in these developments

Fighting Irrelevance: The Role of Regional Trade Agreements in International Production Networks in Asia

This chapter contains the sectoral case study on the Indian automotive sector. The automotive industry in India has thus undergone a transition, from comprising a few auto manufacturers, virtually no auto components makers and only low-quality auto ancillary producers to the league of global auto manufacturers, competitive component manufacturers and emerging ancillary producers. Several studies have revealed that previously the Indian automotive industry was not competitive enough for the global market due to inferior quality, lower labour productivity and high cost of raw materials in India (e.g., Pradosh and others, 2006). However, as in other markets, globalization has made the automotive market very competitive and brought profit margins to a very low level.trade liberalization, international production networks, regional trade agreements, value chain, Asia, automotive, East Asia, India

Overview and classification of coordination contracts within forward and reverse supply chains

Among coordination mechanisms, contracts are valuable tools used in both theory and practice to coordinate various supply chains. The focus of this paper is to present an overview of contracts and a classification of coordination contracts and contracting literature in the form of classification schemes. The two criteria used for contract classification, as resulted from contracting literature, are transfer payment contractual incentives and inventory risk sharing. The overview classification of the existing literature has as criteria the level of detail used in designing the coordination models with applicability on the forward and reverse supply chains.Coordination contracts; forward supply chain; reverse supply chain

French mega-suppliers’ trajectories during the modular era: some evidences on Faurecia, Valeo and Plastic Omnium

The purpose of this paper is to present factual elements concerning the rise (decline) of French mega-suppliers. The study will focus on France’s three main mega-suppliers, all actors that have had a stake in carmakers’ modularisation strategies: Faurecia, Plastic Omnium and Valeo. Section 1 returns to the late 1980s and shows that the emergence of today’s mega-suppliers is rooted in this era and was piloted by French carmakers. Section 2 positions French mega-suppliers in a global hierarchy and distinguishes between two varieties: suppliers of simple parts; and module suppliers, with the latter constituting the focus for the rest of this text. Section 3 shows how module suppliers’ rise is rooted in their aggressive mergers and acquisitions (M&A) strategies. It also demonstrates differences between suppliers in terms of the two leading acquisition strategies that were observed. Section 4 explains why these companies’ profitability continues to disappoint, developing the idea that modular strategies imply a big rise in fixed costs, something that suppliers cannot knock onto sales prices. Finally, section 5 returns to companies’ internationalisation strategies and offers a typology for the different entities that mega-suppliers consolidatemodularity, supply chain, industrial architecture, automobile.

Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Toward a New Synthesis of American Business History

We sketch a new synthesis of American business history to replace (and subsume) that put forward by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., most famously in his book The Visible Hand (1977). We see the broader subject as the history of the institutions of coordination in the economy, with the management of information and the addressing of problems of informational asymmetries representing central problems for firm- and relationship design. Our analysis emphasizes the endogenous adoption of coordination mechanisms in the context of evolving but specific operating conditions and opportunities. This naturally gives rise both to change and to heterogeneity in the population of coordination mechanisms to be observed in use at any moment in time. In discussing the changes in the population of mechanisms over time, we seek to avoid the tendency, exemplified by Chandler's work but characteristic of the field, to see history of adoption in teleological rather than evolutionary perspective. We see a richer set of mechanisms in play than is conventional and a more complex historical process at work, in particular a process in which hierarchical institutions have both risen and, more recently, declined in significance.

Logistics’ place in the global administration of the product’s life cycle

If logistics can be considered an assembly of methods, functions, and ways used by a company with the purpose of giving clients the goods taken at a low price and in a period of time according to clients’ expectations, taking into consideration the quantities settled by contract, we can say that, in a company, the logistics functionality contributes to coordination the offer by requiring the lowest costs, based on some strategic and tactics plans as well as keeping qualitative relations between suppliers and clients. Logistics can be said to represent the optimization of the company’s both fundamental cycles: the cycle-client (from order to delivery) and the project-cycle (from conception to use). From this point of view, this is an essential component of both the strategy and the companies’ organization. Some companies in West Europe have moved or created new production plants in Centre and East Europe, mainly in the new member states of the European Union (NOKIA from Germany to Romania, RENAULT from France to Romania etc.). This is based on some detailed research on the importance that a functional logistics of industrial platforms has taking into consideration both raw materials and clients’ satisfaction, who, more often than not is far from the production place.client, distribution, performance, supplier, supply.

THE CHANGES ON THE FIELD OF LOGISTIC ACTIVITIES

If logistics can be considered an assembly of methods, functions, and ways used by a company with the purpose of giving clients the goods taken at a low price and in a period of time according to clients’ expectations, taking into consideration the quantities settled by contract, we can say that, in a company, the logistics functionality contributes to coordination the offer by requiring the lowest costs, based on some strategic and tactics plans as well as keeping qualitative relations between suppliers and clients. Logistics can be said to represent the optimization of the company’s both fundamental cycles: the cycle-client (from order to delivery) and the project-cycle (from conception to use). From this point of view, this is an essential component of both the strategy and the companies’ organization. Some companies in West Europe have moved or created new production plants in Centre and East Europe, mainly in the new member states of the European Union (NOKIA from Germany to Romania, RENAULT from France to Romania, etc). This is based on some detailed research on the importance that a functional logistics of industrial platforms has taking into consideration both raw materials and clients’ satisfaction, who, more often than not is far from the production place.planning, distribution, management, supply, market