Asian participation is sought in German-led industrial platform by SAP, Prominent German Software Company SAP will call for major Japanese players in the automobile industry, leading Asian semiconductor manufacturers and others to participate in Catena-X, an industrial data platform developed in Germany, said Hagen Heubach, the company's global vice president for the auto industry.
To avoid a repetition of confusion in the auto industry's supply chain, which was hit hard by the shortage of semiconductor chips resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the industry has to "achieve full transparency across the value chain," Heubach said in an interview.
He commented that "Asia is one of the cores and key markets of the supply chain." SAP is a global supplier of supply chain management systems and other software solutions to corporate users.
In cooperation with leading German automobile makers, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz , Bosch and Siemens, SAP has been working since 2020 to set up the Catena-X platform to exchange information across the auto industry.
One complexity for the automotive supply chain at present is that automakers are unable to obtain detailed data except from "tier one" suppliers due to "mental and business barriers" since "the suppliers think the OEM will use the data against them in the next negotiation," Heubach said.
The Catena-X platform uses Web3 technology that enables the distributed management of data on participant companies through countless servers instead of a single central company, Heubach said.
In other words, participants can safely swap data with partners within a controlled range while retaining ownership of the data. In addition, he said, all companies involved in the supply chain can exchange data incognito so that bottlenecks, such as tight supplies of parts, can be promptly be identified across the entire industry.
Participants in the platform also can "increase the transparency" of their supply lines, and "transparency always leads to the next step in business action," Heubach said.
In addition, they can detect problems such as delays in the production of finished cars due to chip shortages and can be "more flexible in the rerouting of the supply chain."
He also strained the need for promoting the cross-industry sharing of data for the management of carbon dioxide emissions, which are a topic to toughening regulations around the globe.
More than 120 companies have participated in the Catena-X platform. While majority of them are German, they include local subsidiaries of Japanese companies such as Asahi Kasei and Denso. But Japanese auto makers, such as Toyota and Nissan, have yet to join it.
With regard to the view for Japanese automakers' participation, Heubach said the project "will go live" by the end of this year, and any company will be able to connect to the network after that. Saying Japan is "one of our core markets," he said. SAP began discussions with Japanese companies four to five months ago.
Heubach stressed that "It's very important to understand" that Catena-X is "not owned by Germans."
"We want to bring the best practice for the world," he said, voicing expectations of Asian companies' participation after the platform begins operating in earnest.