During the past fiscal year, we have worked closely with a number of researchers from around
the world to develop a questionnaire that will provide us with a fuller understanding of the value-chain
issues that surround current automobile manufacturing. While centered on the assembly plant, we are
also looking at the interface between the plants and their suppliers, as well as the plants and their
distributors. We will summarize these efforts, as well as our timetable for data collection. In this writeup
we are focusing only on the work undertaken in relation to assembly plants. We have also done
extensive work in the Modularization/Outsourcing project that is helping to pave the way for some of the
assembly plant work; please refer to the separate report on that project
