Shaping inter-firm collaboration in new product development in the automobile industry: A trade-off between a transaction and relational-based approach

Shaping collaboration in the new product development (NPD) has always been a very difficult task, especially in complex industries like the automobile one. This complexity is particularly true during the engineering phase of the NPD process, where different complex systems are to be designed in a collaborative way. Basically, two-kind of approaches have been observed in the literature and industry: one is more related to market transactions, specifically the west car-company style, the other is more relational based, as in the Japanese car-company style. Now, the increasing globalisation of the industry asks fora merge of the two approaches; indeed, the increasing use of standard components push towards a market outsourcing, while the need of product customisation and the increasing technology complexity push towards long-term alliances and partnerships; then, several companies face the problem of how designing good collaboration solutions in several phases of the NPD process. This paper offers a methodological solution to this problem by searching a trade-off between market and relational approaches and by offering to the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) a decision support for shaping well fitting inter-firm relationship. (C) 2008 CIRP.