Extended Enterprise, The: Gaining Competitive Advantage through Collaborative Supply Chains

Preface

The extended enterprise has been discussed for a number of years, beginning, we believe, with Tom Stallkamp, former purchasing head at Chrysler. He transformed supplier relationships at Chrysler by building bridges to its suppliers, and he changed the adversarial model that had ruled the U.S. auto industry for decades.

The term extended enterprise connotes the collaborative relationships among supply chain members. Buyers and sellers work toward a shared vision—gaining a competitive advantage and achieving greater end use customer satisfaction, relative to other supply chains. Chrysler and its suppliers competed against Ford, GM, and the non–U.S.-based OEMs and their supply chains. It is interesting to note that since the Daimler merger, ...