The automobile industry has experienced revolutionary transitions, from mass to lean production to emerging innovations that are shaping not only the direction of the world auto industry, but other industries as well. The International Motor Vehicle Program at MIT performs comprehensive studies of the worldwide automobile industry.

   The Center’s research helped define the emerging lean production model and gathered in-depth data about manufacturing, product development and supplier relations that documented its performance advantages over mass production. As summarized in the best-selling book, The Machine That Changed the World, available from Rawson Associates, this research had a galvanizing effect on automakers worldwide and demonstrated the broader applicability of key innovations to other industrial settings.  

   Subsequently, research has tracked the diffusion of lean production ideas and capabilities, the competitive response of incumbent mass producers, the reshaping of supply chains (and of the balance of power between automakers and suppliers) due to restructuring and outsourcing, the increasing globalization of production, and new strategic responses to environmental concerns about auto emissions and traffic congestion. 

   The Center is funded by most of the world’s auto companies and many of the principal suppliers. The hallmark of the Center’s research continues to be the collection of primary data and the sharing of knowledge through continuing, intensive interaction with corporate sponsors.

   The IMVP recently launched its Phase Four initiative: Navigating Auto’s Next Economy. Center researchers are looking at the way new technologies are influencing powerful changes in the industry with the development of the "build-to-order" production model that will require new linkages between the way automakers deal with customers and the way the value chain is organized. Technological changes are also on the horizon in the dominant design of motor vehicles (e.g., fuel cells), in the mobility infrastructure (e.g., Intelligent Highway Systems and “smart cars”), in the growing impact of telematics on the vehicle as a mobile office, and in new opportunities afforded by e-business. These changes may destabilize past production paradigms, provide opportunities for new players, and shift the automobile’s social role and impact.