Abstract
Keywords
Automotive industry /Module/1st Tier supplier/Strategy / Value creation.
Abstract
After a promising initial development in the 90s, modularity in auto industry is still in the testing phase. The goal of this paper is to understand this ambiguous situation. Our main argument will be that modularity issue is most of the time addressed from the OEM point of view, as a key descending architectural decision. We will demonstrate that a consistent and sustainable trend to product modularization has also to be analysed from the suppliers ascending strategies point of view. Section 1 is devoted to definitions of module notion, its expected benefits and pitfalls as analysed in literature. In section 2 we focus on the case of Front End Modules, by a longitudinal analysis on the experience of a leader supplier in the domain. The empirical results show that the first modularization moves reveals a large range of situations, depending on perimeter and responsibility delegation. The result in term of profitability for the supplier is quite diversified and not satisfactory enough to sustain offensive development in the future. In section 3, we propose a typology that explicit consistent module strategies for suppliers, characterized by their value target, the resources and the implementing conditions they require. The paper is based on an interactive research with a first tier supplier.