Plante Moran experts in supplier relations speak to Automotive Logistics about this year’s North American Automotive OEM Supplier Working Relations Index study, and why Toyota keep rising while Ford keeps falling.
Toyota Motor North America continues to lead the pack of North America’s automotive OEMs in supplier relations, followed by Honda and GM, while Nissan, Ford and Stellantis drop further in the rankings.
In the latest annual North American Automotive OEM Supplier Working Relations Index study by Plante Moran, Toyota soared ahead of the other carmakers and achieved an overall rating of ‘good to very good’ in the index. The index awards the OEMs points based on supplier responses and how they rank OEMs in terms of building trust, communication, buyer accessibility, responsiveness, buyer knowledge, reducing costs and improving quality.
This year, in the 25th edition of the index, Toyota scored 386 points, up from 338 last year, while Honda increased from 331 to 344, and GM rose from 297 to 299. Despite Nissan having made an improvement last year, its score dropped from its high of 255 in 2024 to 249 this year.
Ford and Stellantis have continued a downward trend, with Ford dropping down the rankings every year since 2020 to reach 191 this year, firmly in the ’poor to very poor’ range, and Stellantis hitting the lowest score at 141, down from 152 last year.
Angela Johnson, who recently was appointed principal PMP at Plante Moran, is responsible for executing the supplier relations survey. She spoke to Automotive Logistics about why Toyota, Honda and GM are peeling ahead.
“I think the magic secret is that the top three are able to lean into relationships they’ve established,” she said. “Conversely, those who don’t have strong relationships established already are going to struggle because this is going to be one more cost impact, one more measure of uncertainty on top of already existing concerns and challenges.”
Suppliers reported feeling like a true partner 12 times more for the top 3 OEMs versus the bottom three.
The top three scored better in communication, responsiveness, accessibility, engagement and buyer knowledge. “These skills help suppliers operate more efficiently, and in turn, create strong relationships,” said Johnson. “Stronger relationships enable OEMs and suppliers to work together and better navigate industry uncertainty with more equitable risk and cost sharing.”
GM moves up the ranks
Johnson said she was surprised by GM’s improvement this year. It seems to be an outlier, since the OEM has a similar set of circumstances to that of Ford and Stellantis, who are both at the bottom of the rankings. The ‘Big Three’ OEMs of Detroit all faced similar supply chain uncertainty in recent years, with the UAW strikes and the tariffs imposed by Trump, albeit to different extremes.
“History shows us time and time again that when the economy and the industry are struggling, OEMs will revert back to their embedded supplier management practices, meaning whatever they’re used to doing to govern suppliers and other embedded behaviours,” Johnson said. “With GM, what you see is an increased level of struggle piled on over five years, and the embedded behavious that they’re exhibiting are the ones that they’ve been planting since 2015. They’ve reached a tipping point that, to me, says they’re starting to turn the ship. In the struggles and uncertainty, they didn’t revert to what people think of as old school GM behaviours. Rather, they moved up.”
Dave Andrea, principal at Plante Moran, told Automotive Logistics: “For each of the three OEMs that did improve, their underlying fundamental variables and factors on business practices all improved. And those enhance and enable the buyers and the purchasing organisation to do their job and handle all of those additional headwinds facing the industry.”
How fluctuating EV demand affects supplier relationships
Something that has been reported by suppliers in the last few studies by Plante Moran is that the response to changing EV consumer demand by OEMs can greatly affect trust.
Andrea explains that suppliers were being called on for a lot of EV investment to build out supply chain support in the transition. “That’s one area where there needs to be better communication,” he says. “Even though there is still a lot of unused capacity, and underutilised capacity because of postponed or cancelled EV programmes, I think this comes back into the financial aspect of it of how the vehicle manufacturers are approaching handling sunk costs, and fairness and equitable sharing of risk and cost, because both the OEM and the supplier are in the same boat.”
How tariffs are playing into automotive supplier relations
As we’ve seen before, any uncertainty in the supply chain can make or break supplier-OEM relationships, depending on the level of communication and trust.
Mark Barrott, automotive leader at Plante Moran, told Automotive Logistics that some OEMs are positioned better to withstand tariffs, and that there will be varying strategies to mitigate against them.
“Ultimately, how suppliers view the OEM’s response on tariffs is going to be influenced by what financial support there will be,” Barrott said.
Johnson agreed, and added: “That also played into the index this year. Tariffs didn’t have the influence that you might think, partly due to the timing of the survey, but fundamentally the number one thing that drives suppliers’ scores for each OEM is cost. The cost aspect is number one, and then behaviours get associated through that.”
Opportunities for Toyota and Nissan
Johnson said that in some of the written responses from suppliers, they saw opportunities to drive more internal alignment with multi-regional operations at Toyota and Nissan.
She said: “With Toyota in particular, it’s very interesting in that suppliers want both the stability and the consistency that they’re used to out of the Japan headquarters, but they want more regional autonomy in the US-based operations. That to me was the most surprising nugget that I pulled out.”
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