The aim of this paper is to identify and to analyze the manufacturing
strategies of two supply chains of the automobile industry and the assemblers’
influences on the other participants in each chain. Two plants of the same
assembler, one in Brazil and the other in Spain and their suppliers, were
analyzed, using questionnaires and interviews. It was observed that the
competitive priorities of the suppliers are strongly conditioned to the strategy
of the assembler, and the ordination of these priorities in the Brazilian case is
different from that in the Spanish case. One of the reasons of this difference in
the ordination of priorities of the Brazilian and the Spanish companies can be
explained by the traditional competitive capabilities for exporting of the Spanish
automotive industry, which inserts in the world market a larger percentile of
production than the Brazilian industry. Even so it can be confirmed that in
Brazil and Spain the inter-business relationships are suffering a transition of
mass production, with conflicting relationships supplier-manufacturer, for a
relationship of larger cognitive density, characteristic of the presuppositions
of organization of supplies based on the model flexible production or lean
manufacturing.