ABSTRACT
This chapter presents brief examples showing the diverse trajectories followed by suppliers to the project. To meet the cost-price target, suppliers were deeply involved in the design-to-cost process to obtain competitive prices for components to be assembled on the powertrain unit and the final assembly line. Among the Indian suppliers, some were multinationals who had several production units on different continents, whether Europe or North America. But often, Indian manufacturers only do business with Indian customers, while other Indian firms who specialize in doing business with Western companies outsource their work to the former. Large multinational component makers did feature among the Kwid suppliers, but they manufactured only one or two highly targeted components. However, these suppliers were subjected to the "Alliance A-Segment Development Unit (2ASDU) way" with tougher negotiation, and the success of the project lay in more than half the suppliers being real Indians.
