Suppliers keiretsu

The Extended Enterprise has also drawn the attention of the business press in an article authored by Jeffrey Dyer. It is offered as a case study of transferring the respected Japanese supplier relationship model, referred to as keiretsu, to the United States. Dyer describes the motivations and the impact of the Extended Enterprise partnership philosophy on product cost and development cycle time. 

Supplier networks the development of supplier associations, and the Japanese equivalent, keiretsu. 

Inspired by the Japanese version of supply relationships with partners, outlined in the introduction to this chapter under Sako s obligationaT description. Western auto manufacturers have been developing their own versions. The model for these has been the keiretsu structure shown in Figure 9.6 below, which is similar to the structure we showed in Figure 1.2. A number of lead suppliers like Robert Bosch and Delphi supply to their customers worldwide and have developed sophisticated marketing, development and logistics capabilities. 

The supply chain keiretsu is a network in which activities are organised by a lead hrm. The typical supplier networks of large automobile and electronics hrms are managed and led by the major assemblers, as shown in Figure 9.6. 

Supplier associations bring suppliers to an OEM or tier 1 supplier together for the purpose of coordination and development. They also aim to improve the quality and frequency of communications between members. In practice, association companies benchmark each other, and formulate improvement projects aimed at increasing the competitiveness of the overall network. Keiretsu is the term used to describe the supplier association in Japan. Here, the additional characteristics are that ownership and control of the network are based on equity exchanges between members. Keiretsu stmctures have attracted recent criticism because of their relative inflexibility and high capital cost. 

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