New forms of relationship and transaction between companies participating in the same supply chain have been applied to improve competitive conditions in the chain. The auto industry is a striking example of an industry in which the relationships between companies have been deeply renewed and motivated mainly by the influence of automakers in the primary suppliers, which in turn work with their own suppliers forming a competitive alliance. This article aims to study the relationship between customer-supplier in the Brazilian automobile industrial park, to create a relational typology from case studies. Technical visits were made in fourteen supplying companies to gather information about the main structural features and the relationship between manufacturers and suppliers in the Brazilian automotive industry. Interviews were conducted with managerial level professionals of industrial areas - production, logistics and supplies, product and process development, purchasing, and human resources. The results showed that the relationships depend on institutional characteristics of the supplier, the complexity of the technology components, the productive capacity, and the history of relationships between customers and suppliers. It could be concluded that the relationship between customers and the supplier companies surveyed are close to the characteristics of an associative model with contractual relationships and long-term high interdependence although price is still used as the main criterion for being successfully selected by automakers.
Customer-supplier relationships; Auto industry; Supply chain
