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COMPETITION IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY: TOW ARDS A CONCURRENT NETWORKS MODEL |
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Concurrent networks: the automotive sector in Brazil The Brazilian automotive market has its own identity, differing from the European, American and Japanese markets. A great number of new plants has been implemented by companies such PSA, Renault, VW, GM, Fiat, Toyota and Honda for automobiles; Scania, Volvo and Mercedes Benz for trucks. In this scenario coexist some newly implemented productive units and other with more than 40 years old. Allied to the facts previously described and considering that the national production level is around 1.5 million units per year, distributed among many plants, at this moment it is established a favorable condition for implementing the best practices aiming a better positioning in the competitive environment. The competitive advantage originates in group of activities that the company performs in the product project, manufacturing, marketing, logistics and support configuring what some authors call value chain. Following this line of thought, the value chain of a company can be seen as a part that fits in a bigger activities chain called value system encompassing the suppliers, distributors and clients. Because the typical operational complexity, the relation of an automobile manufacturer with its suppliers network can utilize practices such as: Kanban, JIT, Milk run, IT, SCM, Modular Consortium and Simultaneous (or concurrent) Engineering. These practices have been discussed largely when turned operational in the United States, Japan and Europe, being necessary some adaptations in terms of infrastructure to obtain the same level of benefits, cost economies and inventory among others, and to obtain equivalent success conditions. This paper aims to present an alternative methodological approach or a new typology to classify cooperative networks, grounded on three main types, e.g. physical, business and value networks. The objective of the model is to subsidize the assessment of networks and supply chain competitiveness in a general sense, focusing the case study on alliances issues. Additionally, the paper presents elements gathered from an ongoing research, for understanding the extension that such procedures has contributed for the betterment of the characters present in the automotive network and the related effects on the relationships between actors. To do so, some practices adopted by the auto manufacturers in their countries of origin will be presented together with the ways they could have been implemented in the Brazilian automotive industry. Additionally, the paper aims to present some elements to understand how the competitive conditions of the companies have been affected by the way. |
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Prof. Dr. Jose Paulo Alves Fusco |
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