Auto Supplier

They were parked pending shipments of the correct steering wheels

Surrounded by curved displays and machines that learn.

Ford Motor Co. says it will halt production of its top-selling F-150 and Super Duty pickup trucks at several of its U.S. plants where they are built following a fire at a plant in Michigan that produces instrument panels.

With the consumer good's industry getting increasingly competitive, Japan's well known consumer brands like Sony are putting a bigger emphasis on supplying parts to automakers for the chance of higher profit margins.

The US Department of Justice has been on a campaign over the past few years to crack down on price fixing in the auto industry, especially from Japanese parts suppliers. In the agency's most recent count, it has indicted 46 people with 26 guilty pleas and raised over $2.4 billion in fines from 31 co

A global auto industry price-fixing scandal being investigated by the US Department of Justice continues to unfurl as ever more companies – most of them Japanese – are found guilty of fixing the prices of numerous types of vehicle parts. Toyo Tire & Rubber is the latest company to agree to plead guilty to the crime and to pay a fine of $120 million, according to a statement by the DoJ.

Major automotive supplier Bosch is stepping out of the solar power business after having lost 2.4 billion euros (nearly $3.1 billion US) since starting up its solar energy subsidiary in 2008.

Investigators are currently expanding the scope of an automotive component price fixing probe. Officials in Australia, the U.S., Europe and Japan are collaborating to discern the breadth of the issue. So far, 20 automotive suppliers have been identified as being part of the investigation, though it's thought that authorities are looking into a si

The world of automotive suppliers has gotten a bit smaller as Auburn Hills, MI-based BorgWarner has acquired Haldex. BorgWarner says its acquisition cost $205 million, and that the paperwork should be signed, sealed and delivered in the first quarter of 2011.

General Motors reports that it has come to an agreement to sell its Nexteer steering operations. Nexteer, which had $6.2 billion in revenue as recently as 2008, was acquired by GM as part of a deal to help Delphi exit bankruptcy. The buyer? Pacific Century Motors, which is part of The Tempo Group with ties to the government in Beijing.

If you think life can't get any worse for the bloodied and battered Detroit three automakers and their suppliers, you're wrong – at least according to a new study from Grant Thornton LLP's Corporate Advisory and Restructuring Service. The accounting and management consulting firm used data from CSM worldwide that forecasts U.S. automakers will produce fewer vehicles on U.S. soil than Asian and European automakers by the year 2012 despite an expected return to profitability.

According to The Wall Street Journal, President Obama has taken a pass on granting auto parts suppliers' request for $10 billion in aid, leaving the financially-strapped companies to seek succor from Congress instead.

A new study by consulting firm A.T. Kearney has found that more than half of all current automotive suppliers could file for bankruptcy protection in 2009, resulting in at least 1 million job losses. Even the most optimistic scenario would have 35% of all suppliers facing insolvency, and some projections suggest as many as 70% could face restructuring through bankruptcy. No specific names were mentioned, but these suppliers could range in size from small Tier 2 companies all the way to the

Ever heard the saying, "It takes a village to raise a child?" Something similar could be said about the automotive industry, except the village is an assorted and wide-ranging group of auto suppliers and the child is your next new car. Currently, the major automakers only deal directly with Tier 1 suppliers, the big companies that assemble major automotive components into large modules. These modules are created using parts from Tier 2, Tier 3 or even smaller suppliers, and these companies are g

As difficult as it was for General Motors and Chrysler to secure emergency loans from the government, the supplier community that supports the auto industry has found it even more so. Until today. This morning, the Obama administration announced its Supplier Support Program, which creates a $5 billion fund to help keep payments flowing through automakers to the suppliers they work with.

There's no question that the Detroit-based auto industry needs a lot of help. There's a 100-year history of how it got into the problems it's in, and some of those problems are beyond management's control.

As vehicles get more and more complex, auto suppliers will need everything in their arsenal to win major contracts from automakers. According to an article on Just-Auto (sub. req'd), by the year 2012, automotive suppliers will bear more than half of the total research and development of a given automobile. What this means for suppliers is that they need to stay at the forefront in environmental technologies. Increasingly complex systems will be necessary for automobiles to meet stringent emissio

"Restructuring, improving base operations and growing global business" were the Big Three for Visteon in first quarter, who turned a profit, despite lower revenues. Following the news, shares rose $1.14 to $7 on the New York Stock Exchange, a substantial 19 percent improvement.

While most observers in the slow-motion Delphi bankruptcy train wreck assume that General Motors will step in to help bail out its struggling former subsidiary company (and its ex-GM workers), apparently there are limits to GM's largesse.