What Is the Right Supplier Park for Your Supply Chain?

Abstract

The establishment of supplier parks (i.e. the co-location of component suppliers in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle assembly plant) is a relatively recent phenomenon in the automotive industry. The first supplier park officially labeled as such was opened in Abrera, Spain, in 1992 to supply the nearby Seat assembly plant. Since then, more than 40 parks have been established, predominantly in Europe and newly industrialised countries. Although significant differences between individual supplier parks can be observed, a consistent classification of colocated supplier clusters is still lacking. Given that the benefits of different supply chain configurations are contingent upon various internal and external factors, this lack of classification poses an important gap in the existing debate. This article pursues three objectives: first, to ground this discussion by providing a consistent classification of the various forms that co-located supplier operations can take, second, to investigate the dependencies between the form of supplier parks and product- and supply chain-related factors like product architecture and demand uncertainty, and finally, to assess the suitability of the different forms of supplier parks for various supply chain configurations.