The International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) is the oldest and largest international research consortium aimed at understanding the challenges facing the global automotive industry.

IMVP, founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979, has mapped lean methodologies, established benchmarking standards, and probed the entire automotive value chain. The program's data-driven methods set the standard for industry research IMVP is the oldest and largest international research consortium aimed at understanding the challenges facing the global automotive industry.

The International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) has had a major impact on the global automobile industry and the economy that surrounds it since it was launched in 1979. More than 50 senior scientists, management experts, social scientists, and engineers have conducted interdisciplinary automotive research at more than 25 universities on six continents.

The program has gone through several phases since its conception in 1980:

• Phase One (1980–1984) focused on identifying trends in the global automotive industry and provided competitive analysis.

• Phase Two (1984–1990) Focused on competition and produced the groundbreaking benchmark studies that resulted in the landmark book "The Machine that Changed the World" .

• Phase Three (1990–1999) focused on the fluctuation of power relations within the global supply chain, the evolution of the lean paradigm of industrial organization, and the challenges of balancing social, economic, and environmental sustainability. A significant and influential result was publication of the book Clockspeed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage.

• Phase Four (2000-today) began in September 2000 when IMVP launched Navigating Auto's Next Economy. The global auto industry has moved with surprising speed to engage the challenges and opportunities of a changing world, ranging from the rise of Internet-enabled business practices, to the increasing incorporation of advanced electronics into cars, and of course the environmental challenge of global warming. Some of the main research topics in this Phase thus include Managing the Extended Enterprise, Web-Enabled Automotive, and Visions of a Sustainable Future. Meanwhile, of course, our core Assembly and Vehicle Engineering benchmarking surveys continue on, joined now by a third one, focused on Innovation and Advanced Engineering.

Key publications

• Womack, James P., Jones, Daniel T., and Roos, Daniel (1990), The Machine That Changed the World
  The Machine That Changed the World
  The Machine That Changed the World is a book based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's $5 million, five-year study on the future of the automobile, written by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones , and Daniel Roos....
  
  : The Story of Lean Production, Rawson Associates
• Clark, Kim and Fujimoto, Takahiro (1991) Product Development Performance, Harvard Business School Press
• Kochan, Thomas A, Lansbury, Russell D., and Macduffie, John Paul (1997) After Lean Production: Evolving Employment Practices in the World Auto Industry, Cornell University Press
• Fine, Charles H. (1998): Clockspeed : winning industry control in the age of temporary advantage, New York, NY: Basic Books. - ISBN 0-7382-0153-7.
• Cusumano, Michael and Nobeoka, Kentaro (1998) Thinking Beyond Lean: How Multi Project Management is transforming Product Development at Toyota and other Companies, The Free Press
• Fujimoto, Takahiro (1999) The Evolution of a Production System at Toyota, Oxford University Press
• Holweg, Matthias and Pil, Frits K. (2004) The Second Century : Reconnecting Customer and Value Chain through Build-to-Order, MIT Press