Top-Manager of ADIS Tachov, BASF, BMW Group, Bosch, Cofinity-X, Continental, DENSO, Ford, Gestamp, Henkel, Innovalia Association, Lear Corporation, MAHLE, Marelli, Mercedes-Benz AG, Valeo, Volkswagen AG, Volvo Group and WITTE Automotive met in Munich at BMW to discuss about the benefits, the next steps and the adoption of Catena-X in the automotive industry. The companies reviewed the status of Catena-X and their individual time plan of using Catena-X use-cases and services in their supply chain.
The advantages of Catena-X were emphasised on the basis of the use cases and examples Traceability, Battery Passport, Data Chain Management (DCM) and PURIS. The latter is designed for data exchange between parties in bottleneck and crisis situation on a daily or weekly basis to increase supply chain resilience, visibility and flexibility. Audi and Bosch, represented by Hartwig Schwerdtle and Holger Langbein, already exchange test data via PURIS and invited other companies to join.
Traceability expert Patrick Strauß presented that Catena-X creates a data driven value chains to trace products which enables relevant business processes from circular product passports over fast and efficient quality assurance processes to a more sustainable value creation and production. This is important for every company to fulfil sustainability and quality targets. Also the battery passport facilitates the fulfilment of sustainability goals because it makes a significant contribution to the calculation of a battery's mandatory carbon footprint and the control and assessment of hazardous substances, as well as sustainably reducing the environmental impact over the entire life cycle and its costs.
“In view of the clear advantages, it was not difficult and did not take long to convince the whole board of the BMW Group of Catena-X. The more partners join, the greater the benefits of Catena-X, which is why I can recommend everyone to join the data ecosystem and also to make all business partners very aware of the benefits”, explained BMW Board Member Joachim Post in his speech.
In the Catena-X ecosystem everyone retains control over their data and can decide for themselves who they share it with, for what purpose and for how long. A "one-up, one-down" relationship is maintained, the data does not have to be shared completely and with all business partners, as is often misunderstood.
Everyone agreed that, in addition to the technical aspects, more work needs to be done on the mindset topics and change management in the future in order to increase the spread of Catena-X. The benefits that everyone can derive from the data ecosystem will be greater the more organizations participate. The Tier 1s are planning to make their suppliers more aware of Catena-X. An agreement was reached to continue the format.
Regular Management meetings will now be established with open participation to rollout Catena-X into the whole automotive supply chain.