Enhancement of the Advanced R^|^amp;D Cooperation Between Automakers and Suppliers in the Japanese Automobile Industry

Abstract

Many studies have shown that Japanese automakers and their respective suppliers cooperate closely even in product development processes. However, most of these studies merely analyzed individual product development projects and discussed factors affecting it, such as development lead times, development man-hours, and product quality, thereby failing to cover cooperation between them in the advanced research and development processes. This paper is designed to analyze the latter aspect as quantitatively as possible. This paper concludes that cooperation between Japanese automakers and their respective suppliers has been expanding into the development of advanced technologies, and suppliers that have the capability to participate in such advanced research and development activities have had closer relations with automakers than others.