Volker Birken

BOT-Models as Instrument for Strategic Competitive Advantages in the Automotive Industry Volker Birken

MA-Thesis / Master, die am 30.06.2003 erfolgreich an einer Fachhochschule für Wirtschaft in Deutschland eingereicht wurde. Abstract: Build Operate Transfer-Models roughly mean that a construction company operates a new built facility on his own or by a company, founded on its behalf, for a limited time. The orderer outsourced the production and pays for each manufactured unit (Pay-on-Production) instead of doing the whole investment for the new facility. At the transfer step the orderer either starts with operating the facility on his own, extends the contract with the facility deliverer (respectively with the extra-founded company), or looks for a new partner for operating the facility. In the middle 90's first BOT projects had been realized in the automotive industry. Only few car manufactures went this way and with different motivations, but all of them expected advantages for their companies. This dissertation will analyze different motivations that led to the decision to ask facility deliverers for offering BOT-Models. An investigation of the automotive environment will be done and based on these results a statement will be derived under which circumstances BOT projects can fulfill the expectations of their customers and if sustainable competitive advantages can be generated with this approach. As BOT projects include outsourcing of own activities for a long period of time, long-term effects especially on industry attractiveness have to be considered, too. BOT projects are meant to generate a win-win situation between OEMs and facility deliverers. Hence it is necessary to understand advantages and disadvantages on both sides, which will be done in a study of this paper. As BOT projects can be realized for construction projects with different degrees of integration into production processes, resulting consequences are different, too. Therefore investigations of this dissertation will be limited to BOT projects