One of the critical challenges faced by such decisions is the potential risk of leaking confidential information through shared suppliers and partners.
And this success has a lot to do with the support its small and medium-sized companies — the famed Mittelstand — provide to each other via shared suppliers and the maintenance of a skilled work force.
Making progress on environmental issues will require all these companies to work with each other and with local N.G.O.'s and relevant government agencies, "to create joint codes of conduct and compliance mechanisms for shared suppliers," he said.
They've come together and said, "let's share the responsibility for auditing the supply chain". The one project I'd cite as a success is RX 360 which is an ambitious initiative by the pharmaceutical industry to share information about the supply chain so they can more effectively target shared suppliers with audits.
The logic: If any of the "Big Three" went bankrupt, many suppliers would also fail; because car companies share suppliers, all U.S.-based manufacturers would suffer parts shortages.
Ferrari's strategy was to buy, in 1997, the moribund Maserati company and reintroduce it as Ferrari's sister marque, sharing suppliers, designers, production capacity and engine technology.
Charles Woo, head of MegaToys, says that he encouraged other toy companies to move close to him when he started up in the early 1980s because they could share suppliers and meet the demand if orders came in too fast.
Yet the companies hereabouts are hard to match for their remarkable agility at solving problems, in part because their independence and small size makes them nimble but also because of their willingness to share suppliers and manufacturing experience with one another.
They have a point: Foreign and domestic automakers alike share suppliers, which would face collapse should the U.S. auto market go under.
In the US, nearly 87.8% of hospitals had MOUs with other hospitals to transfer general patients, 84.1% had contract with other agencies to share suppliers, and more than 70% of hospitals performed mass casualty drills with outside organizations [ 27].
