Defense of the thesis of Maite Anaya Rodríguez

Title of the thesis: “Inter-company collaborative relations in the automotive components sector in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country: Customer-supplier collaboration in the Autocap case”. 

• Thesis title: “Inter-company collaborative relationships in the automotive components sector in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country: Customer-supplier collaboration in the Autocap case”.

• Directors: David Sánchez Bote (Mondragon Unibertsitatea) and Mariangélica Martínez Chávez (Mondragon Unibertsitatea).

o Day: December 19, Thursday.

o Time: 12.00h.

o Place: Aula Magna of the Oñati Campus.

Court:
• President: David Carnicer Sospedra (Consortia Consultores eta University of Valencia).

• Secretary: David Sánchez Bote (Mondragon Unibertsitatea).

• Vocal: Tomás Iriondo Astigarraga (GAIA)

Summary:
The competitiveness of companies depends largely on the ability to respond to the needs of their customers to create greater added value. The demands of customers are increasingly demanding and complex to solve, moving to the rest of the agents in the value chain. In order to provide greater value to the customer and obtain better performance, the suppliers of the automotive sector need to obtain knowledge that often exceeds the limits of the company, thus requiring the establishment of collaboration strategies with other agents. This orientation implies managing relationships and tuning their strategies to those of other suppliers to deploy these strategies efficiently throughout all the activities of the value chain, as is the case of the product development process.

This research deals with the study of inter-company collaboration between client-supplier in the component companies of the automotive sector in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country. The research developed analyzes the collaborative relationships from the perspective of the collaboration processes and the factors that make the collaboration take place successfully through a mainly qualitative design. To do this, in the first place, an exploratory study is carried out based on the analysis of 44 companies and secondly, a single embedded case study that includes an in-depth analysis of four experiences that have taken place within a framework of the company's collaboration. Autocap1.

On the one hand, the analysis has allowed us to conclude the importance of structuring collaboration processes in companies, highlighting the need to direct resources to the initial phases of partner selection and formalization of the collaboration agreement that allow establishing the basis for the correct operation of the process. On the other hand, it concludes the need to coordinate the different factors that influence collaboration agreements to favor sustainable associative relationships over time, as well as the commitment, communication and management of information between the parties. Consequently, proper management of these factors enhances the success of collaboration agreements.

1-The name of Autocap has been created to keep the anonymity of the company

Thesis defense photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/enpresagintza/albums/72157712560211573/with/49345357876/