STUDY RANKS AUTOMAKERS’ RELATIONSHIP WITH SUPPLIERS
BIRMINGHAM, MI—Results from the 2003 North American Automotive Tier One Supplier Study show that the domestic Big Three and the Japanese Big Three have fundamentally different approaches to working with their suppliers and suggest that this difference could be a major factor in the consistently high quality and competitive gains made by the Japanese.
The results are ranked on a new industry index called the “OEM-Supplier Working Relations Index” (WRI), which shows the Japanese automakers consistently moving up the scale toward better relations, and the U.S. automakers remaining at the bottom of the scale.