Companies in today’s automotive industry are under immense competitive pressure to reduce the length of their product development cycle from initial concept to begin of high-volume manufacturing.
From the publication: Engineering Self-Organizing Systems: Methodologies and Applications
For the Canadian and U.S. automotive industries, the internal crossing points of the Ambassador Bridge and the Windsor Tunnel (Detroit-Windsor); the Blue Water Bridge (Port Huron-Sarnia), and the Peace Bridge (Buffalo-Fort Erie) are the critical connecting points within the logistics chain that support new light duty vehicle shipments of pproximately US$4801 billion (the value of the products shipped from assembly plants) between the two countries. Automotive trade flowing between the two countries in 2000 was US$43.6 billion of vehicles and US$34.6 billion of automotive parts.
In 1998, Andersen LLP undertook a three-year study of 10,000 firms to determine the underlying drivers of value creation.
This study was prepared for Andersen LLP.