Well I have just finished my weekly review of the automotive news websites, trying to keep up with the fast pace developments in the world of automotive manufacturing.  It is always interesting to find out what the OEMs are planning, its like watching a giant game of chess unfold in front of your eyes.  Companies trying to make the right move at the right time to gain competitive advantage, but how often do companies make the ‘right’ move. 

All eyes are on the emerging markets at the moment, automotive companies, both OEMs and suppliers establishing a presence in China, India and Eastern Europe.  In addition, you have the opposite effect of OEMs based in the emerging markets trying to get a foothold in western economies.  You can just imagine what the suppliers must be going through, they see their main customer entering a new market and they have to take the decision of whether to join them to retain their custom or wait on the sidelines while their competitors win the business instead.   

Fortunately most of the OEMs manage to keep their supply chains in place and one of the key enablers to this is developing a B2B platform which allows their suppliers to be fully integrated with them, no matter where they are manufacturing around the world.  The rise of the internet and improvement in telecommunication networks has allowed many OEMs to establish 24/7 manufacturing plants in all key economies around the world.  In order to do this, many of the OEMs have not only had to think about their own B2B strategy but also that of their suppliers.  In addition, the OEMs have an added complexity of trying to integrate many different enterprise systems into one seamless platform. Ten years ago, it seemed impossible to link Enterprise Resource Planning, Product Lifecycle Management and Supply Chain Management systems together.  Today, this dream of system integration is just starting to become reality. 

Collaborative environments, shared platforms, integrated applications, call them what you will, but they all have one purpose in life and that is to make it easier for companies to share and get access to information anytime, any place and anywhere.  The internet has certainly made it easier for companies to share information with their suppliers but what are the key components for setting up a collaborative environment?  I guess that topic alone will provide me with a few more blog entries in the near future!,  but until then I will leave you with one thought, integrating business applications is no longer a luxury for today’s automotive company, it is a necessity.

So I have spent the last couple of days preparing for a media interview this morning on RFID usage in automotive.  Now I don’t claim to be the world expert on RFID but from the various articles and websites that I have seen over the past 48 hours it is clear to me that there are significant benefits for automotive companies to adopt RFID technology.  Apologies, RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification and it is essentially deployed via small tags that are fixed to components or completed products.

If I were a manufacturer of a high end luxury car, or expensive aftermarket parts I would be very keen to understand where my car or parts were in the supply chain.   Having visibility of parts movements etc is critical to improving the efficiency of a supply chain and yet the adoption of RFID technology still seems to be at a relatively low level in the automotive sector, well from what I have seen so far anyway.

There seem to be a few issues, firstly the cost associated with implementing the RFID tags on the components / products and more importantly who actually picks up the cost of fitting the tags.  Then there is the small matter of establishing a global network of RFID readers at all ports, warehouses and logistics distribution centres.  Finally there is the importance of data quality, how can you be sure that the RFID tag attached to a container is actually carrying the parts listed on the Tag?. Encoding the tags is a largely manual process and when you introduce a human element to any process there is always the chance of a problem or error being introduced to the supply chain process.

There seems to be a lack of global standards to clearly define the quality of the product information that goes onto the tags or rather that the information is correctly encoded onto the tags. I guess like everything else this will be resolved one day but for the moment successful visibility of a supply chain using RFID technology is reserved for the larger automotive companies.

Over the last couple of days I found that Jaguar, in partnership with Unipart Logistics in the UK,  have successfully setup a real time aftermarket parts tracking system from their factory in the UK to distribution centres in New York and Oakland, California in the U.S.  This works through a network of RFID readers setup at specific ports that Jaguar use to ship their parts out of the UK and into the U.S . This has to be the holy grail of real time parts tracking and this has only been set up within the last year.  So why has it taken so long to get this far?

The automotive sector has always been widely regarded as leading the way with implementing any form of technology, lets hope that the RFID  system implemented at Jaguar can be deployed on a more wider basis so that more companies can benefit from having access to more accurate, real time supply chain information.

So welcome to my blog, this is a new experience for me, you get to hear about blogs on the internet and to be honest this is the first opportunity I have had to actually start one !

Anyway, I have been working in the IT / B2B industry now for nearly 15 years and over this period I have had the benefit of working with many different automotive companies. For example working with a major OEM to help design a management information tool and working with Tier 2 / 3 suppliers to enable them to understand the benefits of implementing a collaborative design environment.

Having worked with both OEMs and suppliers over the years it has been interesting to understand the issues faced by these companies when trying to implement any type of B2B technology. Many of these companies expect to be able to implement B2B technology over night but there are many pitfalls to watch out for and overcome before a company can say that they have implemented a truly ‘efficient’ B2B environment.

Over the coming months I would like to share my thoughts and opinions on B2B related issues in the automotive industry and I will try and make this blog an interesting and at times, light hearted read. Please feel free to contribute to any posts I make……..