The Research on Electronically Collaborative Model in Automotive Industry Supply Chain

Abstract

The automotive industry is like other globalization industries facing the challenges from the market maturity and high customer awareness. The vehicle makers in original equipment manufacturing environment are especially bottlenecked after World Trade Organization, a.k.a. WTO is getting more government agreements. Vehicle assembly thus becomes complex, more then 10 thousands parts are put into one vehicle, which results in the high inter-influence between the members in the supply chain. Therefore, the vehicle assemblers or vehicle makers would target for greater integration of their supply chains for cost-down and market share. To exchange messages in automotive industry more efficiently, governments or industrial organizations have adopted message platforms, such as Covisintreg in North America, eSumtechreg in Korea and Taiwan Automotive Network Exchange System., a.ka. TANXreg. Covisintreg, which has GM, DamilerChrysler, Ford, Nissan and Mitsubishi as the center factories, now operates in 96 countries and has 30,000 company members. eSumtechreg in Korea has Hyundai, DAEWOO and Saang Yong as the center factories. In Taiwan, TANXreg has Taiwan Nissan, China Motor (Mitsubishi), Taiwan Sang Yang and Motor Power as the center factories. Unknown to most industrial practitioners, the construction of the collaborative model is crucial in the business process efficiency. Specifically, such efficiency refers to the processes of business communication. However, the abovementioned message platforms are merely assistant tools which can, to some limited extent, enhance the efficiency of business processes. Therefore, the efficient automobile manufacturing should depend on the collaborative model. This research applies the lean production concept to explicate the inadequacies of the current applied information exchange technique. In addition, the development of future automotive industrial information exchange platform from the perspective of Taiwan TANXreg with the background of original equipment manufacturing environment is proposed. And the professional collaboration in automotive industry supply chain is analyzed here. We also argue that without reengineering the complexity of inter-business operation model by using information technology but adopting information technology on the current process, the expected result for enhancing the entire industry efficiency would not reveal. The research would propose the concepts and methods on strengthening the application of industrial information exchange platform by reengineering the supply chain business model, and eventually bringing a synergy of the entire supply chain.