‘Interlinking’—a Post-Team-Working Automotive Deployment Strategy?

Throughout the past decade, competitiveness in the automotive industry has been judged against criteria set by Japanese automakers. The evolving scenario offers little promise of relief. Indeed, only supreme mastery of time-scales, complexity and costs would seem likely to ensure survival. Against this backdrop, it would seem essential for Western companies to devise new winning formulae capable of out-performing Japanese-inspired ‘team-worked’ organizations. One company's past and planned efforts in this direction and the likely impacts on the business organization are described.