The Empirical Study Of Automotive Industry About Supply Chain Inventory Management And Enterprise Performance

The production and sales of China’s automobile have been ranked first for six consecutive years in the world, to a certain extent, the development of the automobile manufacturing industry can react the entire manufacturing industry, therefore, the development of the automotive industry has always been the focus of attention. Today there is no one automobile manufacturer independently finish the whole process from parts production, vehicle assembly to the final consumer, the development of the automobile industry has become a global supply chain issues. After several years of development, the major auto companies have on the supply chain redesign, optimization and integration in order to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the entire supply chain. Today, the automotive industry from specialized raw material supply, spare parts processing, vehicle assembly to the car sales and the service has formed a complete supply chain. Automotive supply chain is recognized as the most complex supply chain systems, and inventory management is a concentrated expression of a variety of problems in the supply chain, and therefore how to optimize inventory, reduce inventory costs become the focus of attention of supply chain optimization process to the automobile manufacturers.This paper selects the domestic stock markets listed 43 automobile manufacturers for the study, including 22 vehicle manufacturers,21 auto parts manufacturers, sample data for the 2004-2013 time period, using Panel data to analyze the following four issues:the relationship between movements in inventory turns, influencing factors of inventory management, the relationship between inventory turnover and firm performance and supply chain partnerships with corporate performance. This article not only divides automobile manufacturing enterprises into vehicle manufacturers and parts manufacturers, but also studies the inventory details (raw materials, finished products) separately, which helps to analyze the supply chain inventory problems, this approach has not used in previous studies. The following conclusions:(1) The inventory turnover of vehicle manufacturers and parts manufacturers, which including total inventory, raw materials and finished products has increased annually, vehicle manufacturers improve faster than the parts manufacturers.(2) The inventory turnover of vehicle manufacturers and parts manufacturers, which including total inventory, raw materials and finished products, has a significant positive correlation with the size of company and the rate of sales change. When sales are down, the impact on sales of inventory turnover rate of change is more sensitive, this conclusion both been verified in the vehicle manufacturers and parts manufacturers.(3) The inventory turnover of vehicle manufacturers and parts manufacturers, which including total inventory, raw materials and finished products, has a significant negative correlation with lead time and the proportion of fixed assets.(4) Inventory turnover is significantly negatively correlated with gross margin in the parts manufacturers. In the vehicle manufacturing business, there was no significant correlation between gross margin and total inventory turnover, and also inventory turnover of raw materials.(5) In the automobile companies, Supplier concentration has a positive correlation with the total inventory turnover; for the parts companies, vendor concentration has a positive correlation with total inventory turnover. Automobile companies supplier concentration and vendor concentration have a positive correlation with return on total assets, but not found in the parts companies.(6) For vehicle manufacturers, the relationship between inventory turns and return on total assets is more influenced by the WIP inventory turnover; but for parts manufacturers, the relationship is more influenced by the finished goods inventory turnover.