自動車産業における階層的企業間関係の形成
トヨタ自動車の事例
1991 年 26 巻 2 号 p. 1-27
詳細
1991 年 26 巻 2 号 p. 1-27
The production of an automobile requires the assembly of over twenty thousand parts. Automobile manufacturers do not make such a large number of parts within their own firms but purchase, to varying extents, some parts from suppliers. Therefore, the purchasing policies and relationships with their suppliers have considerable effects on the quality and cost of their final products. Japanese automobile manufacturers organise suppliers in a hierarchical order: its first-tier suppliers form a Kyôryoku-kai (Cooperative Association of Suppliers). First-tier suppliers in turn organise second-tier supplier groups. The Japanese automobile manufacturers claim to maintain long-term relationships with their suppliers and tc, cooperate closely. This is often claimed to be the opposite to American automobile manufacturers' approaches to suppliers: they do not organise suppliers in a hierarchical order; and they often purchase parts on a spot-price basis, without developing long-term relationships and close cooperation with suppliers.
This paper traces how the existing inter-firm relationships were evolved at Toyota, the largest automobile manufacturer in Japan, and also elucidates what “close cooperation” between an automobile manufacturer and its suppliers means for the suppliers. After presenting the historical evidence. this paper comes to the conclusion that: Toyota's managerial efforts shaped such peculiar inter-firm relations; Toyota developed and refined its own monitoring system over suppliers; confident with its monitoring system, Toyota transferred it to its first-tier suppliers, hoping they in turn could monitor the second-tier supplier group; Toyota and its suppliers cooperated closely. but Toyota always monitors suppliers' performances closely in terms of cost, delivery, quality and other factors; with such a monitoring system, Toyota facilitates competition among suppliers, who compete vigorously against one another to obtain more orders from Toyota and show their superiority over the others.
