Automotive companies belonging to a regional trade association of industrial companies for southwestern Germany Wirtschaftsverband Industrieller Unternehmen Baden (wvib, Freiburg; www.wvib.de) are calling for fair, partnership-based cooperation across the entire automotive supply chain. “In recent years, we have heard an increasing number of complaints by automotive companies about an unsuitable harshness in the cooperation between manufacturers and suppliers,” says wvib CEO Christoph Münzer, citing this as the basis for the association’s latest position paper.

Of the approximately 300 automotive network’s member companies, 124 have already signed the “Guidelines for fair cooperation in the German automotive industry”. They represent sales of around EUR 6.5 bn and 37,000 employees. Among them are numerous plastics processors.

“With the change in drive technology, increasing diversity of variants, shorter development times and model life cycles and the emergence of new international players, the high cost pressure typical of the automotive industry will remain,” says wvib president Thomas Burger, who is managing partner of the gear wheel and gearbox technology specialist group Schonacher Burger. “But when OEMs exploit their market power to put an undue strain on the suppliers, they dry out a well of innovation and sooner or later, they will shoot themselves in the foot.”

The central statement of the paper, entitled “Moving Forward with Fairness”, is therefore a call for balanced and fair innovation and cost competition, with the aim of strengthening the German automotive companies on global markets. According to Burger, efficiency and quality can only be achieved if there is constructive cooperation at all stages of the value chain.