A new organisation for supplier involvement in vehicle design: the Italian automotive industry case
by Mauro Caputo, Francesco Zirpoli
International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management (IJATM), Vol. 1, No. 2/3, 2001

Abstract: This paper concerns the organisational solutions that best match the need to manage the new product development process in a context of the growing pace of new product introduction, high product variety and complexity, and strong supplier involvement in automotive component design. A very recent organisational structure for new product development at Fiat Auto, a global car manufacturer, will be presented and discussed in the light of recent literature. Strategies based on a major supplier involvement in design seem to benefit from the so-called extended platform organisation, and from the centralisation of component design responsibilities in a newly created organisational unit. This latter facilitates supplier involvement at the concept stage of development and, at the same time, allows the leverage of components and systems technology across models. This setting provides a valid counteraction against some pitfalls of the traditional platform based structure, in which the involvement of suppliers at the concept stage is often too idiosyncratic to the specific model under development, incurring diseconomies of scale and scope.

Online publication date: Wed, 02-Jul-2003

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management (IJATM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com