Supplier Relations Worsen with GM, Ford, FCA

An annual index that measures supplier attitudes about their carmaker customers reveals increasingly strained relations with Detroit's three carmakers.

Poor relations with suppliers much of it related to demands for lower prices cost the three companies a combined $1.7 billion in lost operating profits, according to this year's analysis by Birmingham, Mich.-based Planning Perspectives Inc.

Top scorers in 2015 are Toyota with 336 points (up from 318 in 2014) and Honda with 330 (up from 295). Indexes fell for Ford (to 261 from 267), Nissan (to 244 from 273), FCA (to 224 from 245) and General Motors (to 224 from 244).

Planning Perspectives expresses supplier relations as an index with a maximum 500 points. Scores are based on such measures as communications, trust, willingness to share savings and ability to avoid the costs of late engineering changes. The firm polled 435 suppliers in this year's survey.