Automotive

The automotive industry is inherently complex. It’s highly competitive and, as a result, needs to control and reduce costs across all operational areas. It is also highly regulated and undergoing a shift from traditional combustion drive to a range of alternative fuel technologies. As a result, new manufacturers have entered the market, and the number of car models continues to grow – adding even more complexity, and further increasing competitiveness.

This is all set against a backdrop of increasingly demanding customers who expect fully customized cars, even at the entry level, made exactly to their liking. A simple side mirror for one car model can now have more than 10,000 variants.

This has created a need for efficiency and accuracy at the core of the industry. The automotive sector is at the forefront of using lean production and manufacturing strategies, including Just in Time (JIT) and Just In Sequence (JIS). These allow the production of individually customized cars at very high throughput rates, while minimizing errors and delays.

JIT and JIS require extremely tight integration between the different tiers of automotive suppliers to ensure reliable availability of parts. Automotive supply chain management systems must therefore fully support these processes.

The highly stringent manufacturing methods place immense efficiency and time pressures on the entire automotive supply chain. There is no margin for error at any stage. The parts management itself is highly complex too, due to the high number of variants for each part.

Automotive supply chain businesses must guarantee delivery of parts to the assembly line:

• In the right sequence
• At the right time
• Within arrival windows defined in minutes

This necessitates zero-error warehouse operations with extremely short lead-times, ensuring precise inventory management and on-time availability of all parts.

Automotive warehouse management solutions must offer:

• Pre-assembly of selected part variants in the warehouse
• Repackaging of parts into factory-required standardized packaging
• Correct processing of expensive returnable packaging
• Close guidance of workers through all tasks
• Adherence to legal requirements for managing quality, safety and recall processes

Körber’s automotive supply chain solutions are designed to help automotive manufacturers and suppliers manage these specific challenges, and more.

We have extensive experience in the automotive industry. Our supply chain solutions address all requirements, while optimizing order planning and control. They also offer JIT/JIS planning functionality to support production-synchronous procurement, delivery and staging. They include:

• Full support for EDI integration with OEMs and suppliers, according to US (ANSI x12, EDIFACT) and European standards (VDA, Odette)

• Processing of tugger/route train loading and routing for delivery of parts to the assembly line

• Management of parts (re)packaging, as well as inbound and outbound processing of returnable packaging

• Integration with scanning or voice-directed work solutions for precise task instruction

• Planning and control of light assembly in the warehouse

Our automotive experts can also integrate complementary solutions, such as warehouse automation, scanning solutions, robotics, EDI converters, voice-directed work systems or track and trace via RFID.

Körber recognizes that effective automotive supply chain solutions are highly specific to each customer. We will ensure that your implementation is customized to your exact requirements so you can maximize efficiencies across your supply chain.