THE GEOGRAPHIES OF JUST-IN-TIME - JAPANESE INVESTMENT AND THE AUTOMOTIVE COMPONENTS INDUSTRY IN WESTERN-EUROPE

Japanese investment in automobile production in North America and West ern Europe during the 1980s and early 1990s posed some sharp questions about the future of domestically owned assemblers and automotive comp onent companies. In North America, substantial expansion by Japanese p arts suppliers established new locational patterns geared to producing ''just-in-time'' (JIT) for the Japanese ''transplant'' assemblers. In Western Europe, by contrast, Japanese auto manufacturers chose to wor k from the outset much more closely with an existing supply chain. The paper examines two questions: the extent to which JIT-style systems o f production were emerging and the degree to which JIT production carr ied tendencies toward spatial clustering. The analysis focuses on part s purchasing at Japanese assembly plants in Europe and on restructurin g within the European automotive components industry. I conclude that JIT is far from a universal organizational principle, but rather has d ifferent attributes according to its social context; that there is no necessary association between JIT and spatial clustering, at least as practiced in Europe; and that issues of technical collaboration betwee n companies are increasingly important. I also speculate on future pro spects for a global automotive components sector, mirroring trends in the assembly industry.