Lean production and supplier relations:: a survey of practices in the Aragonese automotive industry

This paper analyzes the main results of a survey to 28 automotive suppliers in the Spanish region of Aragon. It has been found in a regression analysis that the rotation of tasks and teamworking are positively correlated with the training and the use of modular components. Nearly half of the companies cooperate with customers, suppliers, and technological centers to improve their production processes but only two companies cooperate with their customers in component development and design which indicates an underinvolvement of the surveyed companies with the automotive manufacturers. The companies are much more integrated with the automakers in the delivery process, since more than half of the companies have daily deliveries and directly to the assembly line of the automaker. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.