| La Lettre du GERPISA | no 122 (avril 1998) |
I rapporto di fornitura nel post-fordismo Valeria Pulignano
Turin, L'Harmattan Italia, 1997, 160 p.
This book resulted from research for a doctoral dissertation which analyzed the world of automobile suppliers in Mezzogiorno. It underlines the determinant role played by specific policy implemented by Fiat-Melfi, and relies more notably on monographie studies carried out in 1994 and 1995 in car seat production companies for the Punto model, this making up the essentiel portion of the book.
The new supplier network structure emanated from the just-in-time delivery strategy of completely preassembled components. The company then moved onto a subsidiary system, each one furnishing a compete sub-entity under the authority and responsibility of a first-rate supplier. According to Valeria Pulignano, this structure provokes questioning of the partnership image, since it strongly relies on relations of subordination between subsidiary agents and their second-rate suppliera. These subsidiary agents transfer streams of just-in-time demande to their own suppliera. Flow rigidity and its variation in real time play a determining role in the selection and geographic distribution of suppliers, as well as in their organization so as to guarantee flexibility for their deliveries. Each one of them sought to develop a response in function of its position within the new organization and existing constraints.
Consequently, some of them internally develop a form of flexibility based on enlarging personnel competence, team work, and internal stocks. Others, especially those with less complex technology, rely more on their production capacity, sideline stream subcontracting, and logistic organization. This structure, grounded in the new productive process, reinforces the constructor's advantageous position, but in a different sense.
In the Italian realm, the Melfi plant constitutes a southern pole of Fiat's reorganized productive system. Before its creation, Fiat's establishments in the Mezzogiorno were essentially peripheral with regards to Torino, both from a decisional and productive standpoint. Links between Melfi and other Fiat plants in the south were reinforced. This transfer of the gravity center does not only involve the firm: a third of Melfi's suppliers, which in fact makes up the essentiel portion of the system, is now located in a 20 kilometer vicinity. In fact, Pulignano's book underlines the emergence of a new system of relations the Mezzogiorno between the southern and northern parts of the country