The paper analyses the strategies of internationalization pursued by first tier automotive suppliers (FTS). The advent of modular production in this sector implies many changes in vertical relationships, which can in turn be used to explain the causes and forms of suppliers’...

The purpose of this paper is to present factual elements concerning the rise (decline) of French mega-suppliers. The study will focus on France’s three main mega-suppliers, all actors that have had a stake in carmakers’ modularisation strategies: Faurecia, Plastic Omnium and Valeo. Section 1...

This article questions a terminology that is frequently used to describe automotive supply chains’ industrial architecture. Since vertical disintegration became a trend in the 1980s, this architecture has been represented using the image of the pyramid. Implicitly, authors have had the image...