By Bob Sorokanich, Senior Editor, GM News
What is an automotive supplier, and how does General Motors recognize the very best?
2026-05-20
Your car might just be the most mechanically complex object you use on a daily basis. Today’s vehicles are comprised of tens of thousands of parts, all working together to get your family where they need to go safely and comfortably. Making that happen requires diligent work from General Motors – as well as roughly 20,000 companies, called suppliers, that provide components and services that go into every car, truck and SUV we build.
This week, as GM celebrates its 34th annual Supplier of the Year honors, GM News sat down with Shilpan Amin, senior vice president and chief procurement and supply chain officer, to talk about what suppliers do, and what it takes to stand out as one of the best.
What is an automotive supplier?
An automotive supplier, simply put, is a company that supplies goods or services to an automaker like General Motors. Many of these companies manufacture specialized components and ship them to the factories where vehicles are assembled, but the supplier industry also includes companies that make factory equipment, develop vehicle software, or offer logistics support for transporting parts and vehicles around the world.
“Nearly 70 percent of the value of a car is actually done outside of GM,” said Amin. “Our suppliers make wheels and tires, instrument panels, seats, door panels, and so much more. A lot of the technologies that you touch, feel and see in our vehicles are done through our suppliers.”
How do suppliers help GM build better vehicles?
Every component of a modern automobile has to perform flawlessly in a variety of driving scenarios – in scorching summer heat and freezing winter cold, on fast highways and rough dirt roads. Many vehicle systems are engineered to stand up to brutal crash testing. Others are optimized to improve energy efficiency, or to minimize the noise and vibration you experience as you drive down the road.
Automotive suppliers help GM meet these challenges by specializing in specific components within the vehicle. “As an example, we have suppliers that mainly do vehicle seats,” Amin told GM News. “They know how to build a seat efficiently, how to innovate around new technology, and how to drive scale to maximize affordability. Having these suppliers that are concentrated in specific areas of expertise in different sections of the vehicle, we get a lot more focused resources and technology to make every part of the vehicle the best it can be.”
How does GM work with suppliers to deliver the best vehicles to our customers?
Specialized suppliers don’t just deliver truckloads of parts to GM manufacturing facilities – they collaborate with GM engineers and designers to make sure every part is optimized for quality, durability, style and safety. “Nothing is a hundred percent supplier driven; nothing is a hundred percent GM driven,” Amin says. “You have this collaboration between suppliers and GM that helps us find the right materials, the right shapes, the right technology and layout, how each part links together in the vehicle. When they all come together, that's what creates great products and innovation that customers love.”
How big is the world of GM suppliers?
Across all four GM brands – Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac – roughly 20,000 suppliers in 120 countries are involved in the vehicles we build. “When we talk about our suppliers, it’s not just the parts you see in the vehicles,” Amin told GM News. “Suppliers bring these parts from around the world into our factories. They help build our plants, they provide the machinery and equipment that goes into our manufacturing facilities. It’s really everything that keeps our operations running.”
Why do the best suppliers in the world choose to work with GM?
In one word: Relationships. “How do you get treated? How do you feel? Do you know you're going to be taken care of when you take a risk? All of those things allow suppliers to lean in more heavily with GM,” Amin explained. “A lot of these parts that get supplied are very capital intensive and resource intensive. Our suppliers have to decide how they allocate their capital and resources. This is where relationships matter.”
It’s not just a transaction. “The part that’s unique to GM is the level of collaboration we have with our suppliers,” Amin told GM News. “Our relationships with suppliers are built on a long-term view. When GM becomes a customer of choice for a supplier, we get their best resources, their smartest people working on GM products.”
That trust goes in both directions, allowing GM to involve suppliers earlier in the development of new vehicles. “Early engagement with our suppliers helps us create high quality designs done right the first time, which helps us bring our product to market at a much more accelerated pace,” Amin told GM News. “With the volume that GM has, and the long-term agreements we make with our suppliers, we can scale technology across our portfolio quickly and achieve cost affordability on parts.” This commitment to a strategic and collaborative relationship, Amin says, helped GM achieve its highest-ever score in the 2026 Plante Moran North American Automotive OEM-Supplier Working Relations Index Study. This annual review, which evaluates relations between automakers and their suppliers, has listed GM as number one among American automakers for the past 10 years.
Recognizing the very best at Supplier of the Year
Amin is frank about the challenges that GM’s suppliers face. “We ask a lot of our suppliers,” he said. “We set the bar really high, and those that deliver the best results should be rewarded and recognized accordingly.”
GM’s supply base is enormous, but the best of the best still stand out and are recognized as part of GM’s prestigious Supplier of The Year honors. “We only do this with our top 0.1 percentile of our suppliers,” Amin said. “On average, we recognize about a hundred suppliers out of up to 20,000 globally. It’s something to strive for – it motivates our suppliers for continuous improvement, and it recognizes their teams and all the hard work they do that results in a better product for our customers.”
In addition, GM bestows a separate Overdrive Award for suppliers that go above and beyond. “Whether it's in innovation, whether it's in helping us manage a crisis across our priorities – that’s the best of the best, our top elite recognized suppliers,” Amin said.
Among this year’s Overdrive honorees is Dolby Laboratories. The company earned an Overdrive Award for Innovation for its work bringing Dolby Atmos to Cadillac EVs, helping create a more immersive in-vehicle listening experience through close collaboration with GM’s engineering, design and marketing teams.
When all is said and done, this year’s 103 Supplier of the Year and Overdrive winners represent 14 countries and are a strong mix of new entrants and established contributors. For example, 16 suppliers are celebrating their first wins this year, while another 8 are celebrating 20 or more wins. The combination is key to driving innovation and delivering consistent results day in and day out for customers.
Impact beyond the factory floor
General Motors is the growth engine of the automotive industry, employing more workers than any other automaker in the U.S. and contributing nearly $50 billion to the national GDP.
And that economic impact extends beyond GM itself. For example, in the U.S. in 2024 GM’s total impact on GDP exceeded $130 billion, including our supply chain purchases.
GM’s supplier network amplifies that impact by creating jobs across the U.S. and around the world. Suppliers also strengthen their communities by supporting charities and workforce training programs.
“There’s a multiplier effect,” Amin told GM News. “Between GM and our suppliers, the number of people we interact with and support is a huge factor in so many communities.”
Your car might just be the most mechanically complex object you use on a daily basis. Today’s vehicles are comprised of tens of thousands of parts, all working together to get your family where they need to go safely and comfortably. Making that happen requires diligent work from General Motors – as well as roughly 20,000 companies, called suppliers, that provide components and services that go into every car, truck and SUV we build.
This week, as GM celebrates its 34th annual Supplier of the Year honors, GM News sat down with Shilpan Amin, senior vice president and chief procurement and supply chain officer, to talk about what suppliers do, and what it takes to stand out as one of the best.
What is an automotive supplier?
An automotive supplier, simply put, is a company that supplies goods or services to an automaker like General Motors. Many of these companies manufacture specialized components and ship them to the factories where vehicles are assembled, but the supplier industry also includes companies that make factory equipment, develop vehicle software, or offer logistics support for transporting parts and vehicles around the world.
“Nearly 70 percent of the value of a car is actually done outside of GM,” said Amin. “Our suppliers make wheels and tires, instrument panels, seats, door panels, and so much more. A lot of the technologies that you touch, feel and see in our vehicles are done through our suppliers.”
How do suppliers help GM build better vehicles?
Every component of a modern automobile has to perform flawlessly in a variety of driving scenarios – in scorching summer heat and freezing winter cold, on fast highways and rough dirt roads. Many vehicle systems are engineered to stand up to brutal crash testing. Others are optimized to improve energy efficiency, or to minimize the noise and vibration you experience as you drive down the road.
Automotive suppliers help GM meet these challenges by specializing in specific components within the vehicle. “As an example, we have suppliers that mainly do vehicle seats,” Amin told GM News. “They know how to build a seat efficiently, how to innovate around new technology, and how to drive scale to maximize affordability. Having these suppliers that are concentrated in specific areas of expertise in different sections of the vehicle, we get a lot more focused resources and technology to make every part of the vehicle the best it can be.”
How does GM work with suppliers to deliver the best vehicles to our customers?
Specialized suppliers don’t just deliver truckloads of parts to GM manufacturing facilities – they collaborate with GM engineers and designers to make sure every part is optimized for quality, durability, style and safety. “Nothing is a hundred percent supplier driven; nothing is a hundred percent GM driven,” Amin says. “You have this collaboration between suppliers and GM that helps us find the right materials, the right shapes, the right technology and layout, how each part links together in the vehicle. When they all come together, that's what creates great products and innovation that customers love.”
How big is the world of GM suppliers?
Across all four GM brands – Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac – roughly 20,000 suppliers in 120 countries are involved in the vehicles we build. “When we talk about our suppliers, it’s not just the parts you see in the vehicles,” Amin told GM News. “Suppliers bring these parts from around the world into our factories. They help build our plants, they provide the machinery and equipment that goes into our manufacturing facilities. It’s really everything that keeps our operations running.”
Why do the best suppliers in the world choose to work with GM?
In one word: Relationships. “How do you get treated? How do you feel? Do you know you're going to be taken care of when you take a risk? All of those things allow suppliers to lean in more heavily with GM,” Amin explained. “A lot of these parts that get supplied are very capital intensive and resource intensive. Our suppliers have to decide how they allocate their capital and resources. This is where relationships matter.”
It’s not just a transaction. “The part that’s unique to GM is the level of collaboration we have with our suppliers,” Amin told GM News. “Our relationships with suppliers are built on a long-term view. When GM becomes a customer of choice for a supplier, we get their best resources, their smartest people working on GM products.”
That trust goes in both directions, allowing GM to involve suppliers earlier in the development of new vehicles. “Early engagement with our suppliers helps us create high quality designs done right the first time, which helps us bring our product to market at a much more accelerated pace,” Amin told GM News. “With the volume that GM has, and the long-term agreements we make with our suppliers, we can scale technology across our portfolio quickly and achieve cost affordability on parts.” This commitment to a strategic and collaborative relationship, Amin says, helped GM achieve its highest-ever score in the 2026 Plante Moran North American Automotive OEM-Supplier Working Relations Index Study. This annual review, which evaluates relations between automakers and their suppliers, has listed GM as number one among American automakers for the past 10 years.
Recognizing the very best at Supplier of the Year
Amin is frank about the challenges that GM’s suppliers face. “We ask a lot of our suppliers,” he said. “We set the bar really high, and those that deliver the best results should be rewarded and recognized accordingly.”
GM’s supply base is enormous, but the best of the best still stand out and are recognized as part of GM’s prestigious Supplier of The Year honors. “We only do this with our top 0.1 percentile of our suppliers,” Amin said. “On average, we recognize about a hundred suppliers out of up to 20,000 globally. It’s something to strive for – it motivates our suppliers for continuous improvement, and it recognizes their teams and all the hard work they do that results in a better product for our customers.”
In addition, GM bestows a separate Overdrive Award for suppliers that go above and beyond. “Whether it's in innovation, whether it's in helping us manage a crisis across our priorities – that’s the best of the best, our top elite recognized suppliers,” Amin said.
Among this year’s Overdrive honorees is Dolby Laboratories. The company earned an Overdrive Award for Innovation for its work bringing Dolby Atmos to Cadillac EVs, helping create a more immersive in-vehicle listening experience through close collaboration with GM’s engineering, design and marketing teams.
When all is said and done, this year’s 103 Supplier of the Year and Overdrive winners represent 14 countries and are a strong mix of new entrants and established contributors. For example, 16 suppliers are celebrating their first wins this year, while another 8 are celebrating 20 or more wins. The combination is key to driving innovation and delivering consistent results day in and day out for customers.
Impact beyond the factory floor
General Motors is the growth engine of the automotive industry, employing more workers than any other automaker in the U.S. and contributing nearly $50 billion to the national GDP.
And that economic impact extends beyond GM itself. For example, in the U.S. in 2024 GM’s total impact on GDP exceeded $130 billion, including our supply chain purchases.
GM’s supplier network amplifies that impact by creating jobs across the U.S. and around the world. Suppliers also strengthen their communities by supporting charities and workforce training programs.
“There’s a multiplier effect,” Amin told GM News. “Between GM and our suppliers, the number of people we interact with and support is a huge factor in so many communities.”