Editorial: Automotive Value Chains: A Decade of Disruption and Transformation

Résumé:

Over the past decade, automotive supply chains have been buffeted by a range of opportunities and challenges. The most evident of these adjustments are the consequence of a blend of societal emergencies, the introduction of disruptive technologies, and the onset of robust, new regulations (e.g., those related to climate change, electrification, and emission mandates). Throughout this period, a dominant theme in the literature affecting the industry has been the role that digital technologies have and will play in shaping current and future manufacturing products and processes.
Expressions such as ‘emergency’, ‘disruptive’, or ‘robust’ connote expeditious reactions, swift adaptations, and tumultuous adjustments by the industry and its principal stakeholders. Indeed, in the context of the automotive industry, the introduction or promise of connected, autonomous, shared, or electric vehicles (EVs) (often referred to by the acronym CASE) seems transformative, perhaps even radical. The reality, however, is that in the automotive industry, the development, implementation, and proliferation of innovation tends to occur over decades. Moreover, long timelines for developing new technology, retooling factories, or reshaping supply chains means that the process has tended to unfold via a series of smaller, successive changes that cumulatively lead to the transformations that have been assured or suggested.

This special issue of the International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management offers a collection of papers that examine factors that influence and steer adjustments within global automotive supply chains. In it, we explore a selection of under-explored, but still significant, factors affecting those adjustments. Therefore, rather than restricting our exploration to the CASE-related engrossments that have dominated current literature and media, this issue looks at a multifaceted collection of processes, regions, inputs, and events that reflect a set of less conspicuous, more subtle, but nonetheless consequential, assemblage of factors influencing and directing the evolution of the automotive industry’s global supply chains. They span a variety of topics and engage researchers from diverse disciplines and regions.