(May 23, 2011) DETROIT (PRNewswire) — There's good news for the U.S. Big Three automakers and not so good news for the Big Three Japanese automakers in the 11th annual study of working relations between the six North American automakers and their suppliers. 

As a group, the US auto-makers continue to show steady improvement, and the Japanese automakers continue to slip.

Ford continues to lead the U.S. automakers in having the best relations with its suppliers staying in third place overall, while GM and Chrysler continue to improve. Chrysler, while remaining in last place, has had its second straight year of significant improvement. 

Among the Japanese automakers, Honda, which was in first place overall for the last two years, has continued to drop and has slipped to second place behind Toyota, which appears to have bottomed out, while Nissan remains stuck in neutral in fourth place.

Comparing the six U.S. and Japanese automakers overall, Toyota is in first place, followed by Honda, Ford, Nissan, GM and Chrysler, according to the 2011 North American OEM — Tier One Supplier Working Relations Study conducted annually by Planning Perspectives, Birmingham, Mich.

The annual study tracks supplier perceptions of working relations with their automaker customers in which they rank the OEMs across the six major purchasing groups broken down into 14 commodity areas. The results of the study are used to calculate the Working Relations Index (WRI) based on 17 working relations variables. This year, 451 suppliers participated, representing 63 percent of the six automakers' annual buy. 

New for this year, Planning Perspectives included the Big Three European auto companies with manufacturing operations in North America:  Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW.  However, given this is the first year for the European companies, they are not included in Planning Perspectives' "official" Working Relations Index because one year's worth of data doesn't provide the depth of information necessary to explain trends and relationships relative to other OEMs.   

If all nine automakers are ranked, Mercedes would be in first place, followed by Toyota, BMW, Honda, Ford, VW, Nissan, GM and Chrysler. Ford, Mercedes and Toyota are first within their respective groups.