R&D ORGANIZATIONS IN AUTOMOTIVE SUPPLY CHAINS

Automotive concerns manage the innovation of their suppliers, facilitate regional and cross-border cooperation among suppliers, care for the protection of intellectual property, ensure the safe transfer of technologies, ideas, goods, services and people. They use the single market, digital infrastructure, transport infrastructure and the European network of knowledge. They develop research and development centers in host countries and assign them specific roles. One of them are devoted primarily to technical support (technology adaptation) for the local branch of their mother corporation. Other centers support an entire group of branches in a given geographic region (e.g. in Europe), and their role is to develop products for the local or regional market, and to acquire and cooperate with suppliers in R&D. The purpose of this article is to describe the organization and management of research and development activities in selected automotive concerns, and to identify the roles of R&D centers situated in Poland. The author attempts at assessing: the involvement of automotive suppliers in cooperation with R&D centers. The impact of this involvement on the functioning of international supply chains was analyzed. Companies which invested in research and development and which cooperate with R&D centers change their relations within the supply chain, shifting from integrated, transaction-oriented activities and adapting dynamic approach, whereby all activities start with shared research and development projects.