AD&P; > July 2014 > TALK > Insights from IHS > Michael.Robinet@ihs.com
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INSIGHTS FROM IHS
Michael Robinet, Managing Director, IHS Automotive Consulting
How Globalization Is Gobbling
Up Local Resources
"Globalization" is one of those
oft-utilized—and oft over-utilized—
terms used to describe several
regional shifts within the industry.
It pertains to the approach of how
vehicles are engineered, manufac-
tured, marketed, and components
are sourced. To be concise, globali-
zation means devoting fewer over-
all resources to efectively cover
more regions with a common design.
Virtually every OEM touts this phi-
losophy as investors are interested
in the efciency of the approach
and consumers beneft from the
ability to improve technology inte-
gration from a scale perspective.
Since the middle of last decade,
the momentum behind global plat-
forms has gained steam to a point
where the vast majority (over 90%)
of unibody vehicles currently built
in North America are also built
elsewhere. While the Japanese and
Korean OEMs were frst to bring
these pan-region platforms to
North America, European- and
Detroit-based OEMs needed to
move toward these structures from
fexibility, speed and cost stand-
points. In fact, in some cases we
are entering the 2nd generation of
global platforms, expanding the
volume and body-style breadth.
These started in the likely places
of small and compact sedans/
hatchbacks, leveraging scale from
Europe or Japan. Of late, midsize
sedans, CUVs and even EU-designed
full-size vans (Ford Transit and
Ram ProMaster) have joined the
parade of various oferings built
in more than one region.
Global platforms have altered the
way procurement occurs. In the
past, when diferent vehicles were
built in each region, the use of
regional suppliers was justifed.
The engineering and design teams
had full capability to handle their
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