روابط تولید کننده و تأمین کننده ناب: بررسی روش ها در صنعت خودرو آراگونی

This paper analyzes the main results of a survey to 28 automotive suppliers in the Spanish region of Aragón. It has been found in a regression analysis that the rotation of tasks and teamworking are positively correlated with the training and the use of modular components. Nearly half of the companies cooperate with customers, suppliers, and technological centers to improve their production processes but only two companies cooperate with their customers in component development and design which indicates an underinvolvement of the surveyed companies with the automotive manufacturers. The companies are much more integrated with the automakers in the delivery process, since more than half of the companies have daily deliveries and directly to the assembly line of the automaker.

During the last fifteen years the structural changes of the automotive industry have modified the technology and the business organization of the large automakers and their suppliers in many ways (Table 1): reduction and simplification of automotive components; greater flexibility of the organizational structure by technological means; restructuring of the suppliers system; and globalization of the purchases (Womack et al., 1990 and Salas, 1996). This restructuring process in the automotive industry has been the object of various studies, most of them on the large auto manufacturers (Hudson and Schamp, 1995, Pallarès, 1997 and Layan, 1997).However, these organizational and technological changes in the automakers have also influenced their suppliers. The auto manufacturers have increasingly externalized their purchases and their component design to first-tier suppliers, diffusing lean production practices throughout the supply chain (MacDuffie and Helper, 1997). Therefore, more recent studies have focused on the auto supplier industry and its relationship with the automakers. In Spain, these studies are very scarce (Marı́n et al., 1996 and Aláez et al., 1996) and so this paper wishes to contribute to this research area, giving empirical evidence of some lean production practices in the supplier automotive industry of an Spanish region. The paper is structured in the following way. Section 2 shows the basic economic indicators of the automotive industry in Aragón, the methodology used for the study, and the structural data of the surveyed sample. Section 3 analyzes the technology management and flexible automation on the companies that influence on their lean production system. Section 4 studies some flexibility practices in the workplace. Section 5 is occupied of the flexible relationships with other companies, mainly with suppliers and customers. Finally, some concluding remarks are included.

This paper presents the main results of a survey to 28 automotive suppliers in the Spanish region of Aragón. The subdivision of the sample of a group of component manufacturers and other of subsystem manufacturers has emphasized that the first subsample accomplishes a greater technological effort in R&D, Technical Engineering, and employee training. However, there have not been found any significant differences between both subsamples on the variables of the lean production. The numerical flexibility and the functional flexibility have increased in the surveyed companies in terms of temporary employees, rotation of tasks and teamworking. It has been found in a regression analysis that the rotation of tasks and teamworking are positively correlated with the training and the use of common components. Nearly half of the companies cooperate with customers, suppliers, and technological centers to improve their production processes. However only two companies cooperate with their customers in component development and design which indicates an underinvolvement of the surveyed companies with the automotive manufacturers. The companies are much more integrated with the automakers in the delivery process, since more than half of the companies have daily deliveries directly to the assembly line of the automaker. The percentage of Just-in-Time deliveries is positively correlated with the percentage of workers trained in the company and with the level of use of modular components.