Managing recalls in the automotive industry is often costly and a logistical nightmare. German car manufacturers alone set aside reserves of €1.4 to €1.8 billion per year for such cases. However, thanks to a collaboration between SAP and Catena-X, significant cost savings can be achieved, and the efficiency of recalls can be drastically improved or avoided.
Enable next-generation processes with Catena-X-ready solutions tailored to automotive industry requirements
Catena-X is a collaborative data ecosystem developed specifically for the automotive industry as part of the Manufacturing-X program. It enables companies along the entire supply chain to exchange data securely without giving up their data sovereignty.
“Quality management is traditionally one of the areas where data exchange is associated with the greatest inhibitions,” explains Hagen Heubach, global vice president and head of Discrete Industries at SAP and a member of the Catena-X e.V. Executive Board. “Neither manufacturers nor suppliers like to talk about possible defects. Therefore, this was an obvious use case in the context of industrial data exchange with Catena-X, which also has significant financial implications.”
A concrete example of the success of this collaboration is a recall action in which a preliminary analysis showed that 1.4 million vehicles were affected. However, after the exchange of field and production data made possible by Catena-X, it turned out that only 14 vehicles actually had to be recalled. This precise error analysis was made possible by comparing field data provided by the OEM manufacturer and production data from the suppliers of the individual parts.
By using Catena-X and SAP Quality Management, errors can be detected early and recall actions carried out more precisely, leading to significant cost savings.
This bilateral exchange also strengthens the trust relationship between OEMs and suppliers. The technical requirements of Catena-X allow each partner within the ecosystem to make its data available to any other partner for a specific purpose and for a limited time. The sovereignty over the data remains with the one who shares it. Field data, or the data produced by the vehicle on the road, are particularly valuable for suppliers as they allow conclusions to be drawn about how their parts perform under different conditions on the road.
