Vol. 1, Issue 10, Part A (2015)

Findings: The trends of supply chain practices in Auto Industry considering various stakeholders and business practices used across entire value chain are more or less uniform. The SME’s by their capacity and constraints are more or less governed by OEM’s and Tier I suppliers. The Tier 1 suppliers play major role in binding the SME’s due to the fact that OEM’s are interested in buying the complete assembly from Tier 1 suppliers barring few cases. While the culture of lean supply chain management is need of the hour, the industry maturity is reached only up to lean manufacturing or operational excellence at own premises as far as SME’s are concerned.

Research Limitations / implications: The focus of study is limited to Teir 1 & Tier 2 suppliers of 4 big OEM players viz. Mahindra & Mahindra, Bajaj, Tata Motors and Maruti Udyog limited. The scope is to identify existence of lean practices across the entire value chain of supply chain.

Practical implications: Although supply chain management is getting prime importance in today’s business world, penetration of best SCM practices is far away from reality. While the intent of SME’s is always to adopt good practices, they are so much bogged down by their day to day activities and confined by limited resources that SCM participants at the far end of the value chain do not add much value thereby losing its rigour.