Automobile companies formerly were highly integrated enterprises.  Ford built cars starting with iron ore, coal, and limestone.

However, over the last few decades major auto makers have become final assemblers and marketers, who are dependent on deep supply chains. In many cases they have spun out divisions into free-standing companies. These in turn have spun out some of their divisions, each spin out lengthening the supply chain.

Theoretically this increases efficiency in a number of way.  First, the creaky, inefficient division is no longer sheltered within the cost accounting structure of the parent company.  It is now exposed to market competition and it must get efficient or die. Second, the spun out entity can win business from other customers, increasing its volumes and realizing efficiencies of scale.

However, a "spin out" represents a symbolic analyst bonanza.

Since the suppliers are separate from the parent, there must be real business processes between them to replace the informal coordination between divisions of a single company. This requires the parent to draw up detailed design and quality specifications, write requests for proposals, evaluate proposals and bids, formulate contracts, get the contracts approved by legal and funded by management, receive the parts, monitor inventories and reorders, analyse invoices, and send out payments with remittance advices showing bonuses and penalties. The supplier now has to have a marketing and sales division, create proposals, negotiate contracts, evaluate proposed designs, prepare shipping documents with test results, invoice and bill the parent company, and negotiate collections, including negotiating any design changes/replacement parts/penalties due to issues with quality. All this is coordinated by extensive software systems for intercompany ERP and accounting, which must also be operated and maintained.

Furthermore, the parent can no longer depend on a single supplier, who may have a business interruption, so the parent has to do all this with at least a second source for each part. This increases the adminstrative, maintenance, warranty, and long term stocking complexity for the parent. And the supplier, no longer assured of the parent's volume, has to sell to as many other customers as possible, setting up a multiplicity of relationships with differing processes as demanded by the customers.

Each of these suppliers in the supply chain needs a set of general and adminstrative functions, such as a board of directors, upper management, legal, regulatory, marketing, human resources, real estate, accounting, etc., which were not needed by the integrated division.

Lastly, the process for spinning out the supplier also involves a lot of symbolic analyst work to prepare the legal documents, get approvals, get new debt to leverage up the balance sheet, choose a name and logo, implement the new identity ad campaign, etc.

The end result is an industry with a greatly increased number of symbolic analyst jobs.