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.
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.
Catena-X: The first open and collaborative data space for the automotive industry
Initially funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Catena-X was launched in 2021 amid the pandemic and has developed rapidly since. The first development consortium included 28 partners; today there are almost 200 Catena-X e.V. members, with an increasing focus on internationality. Regional hubs have been established in North America, China, France, Sweden, and Spain to cover the specific requirements and automotive regulations of the respective countries.
“Every market has its peculiarities and different regulations and requirements for the automotive industry that we have to take into account,” Heubach emphasizes. “To this end, we work closely with the automotive associations of the respective countries, such as GALIA in France or the Automotive Industry Action Group in the U.S.”
Another milestone was the official go-live of the data space in October 2023, which enables data exchange. SAP is the leading provider of Catena-X-certified business applications and currently has the most solutions on the market in the various Catena-X use cases.
“We have to officially certify our solutions once for Catena-X — for example, it is checked whether our SAP solutions meet the standards defined in Catena-X for interoperable data exchange,” explains Nadine Kanja, solution head of SAP Industry Network Automotive and Catena-X for the Automotive Business Unit at SAP SE.
In August 2024, a new development consortium called Catena-X Next started. Scheduled to run until September 2026, its focus topics include quality management, sustainability, and the Eclipse Dataspace Connector, the central communication component of the Catena-X architecture.
Other car manufacturers such as Volkswagen and Ford have also set Catena-X as their data standard. This shows that Catena-X and SAP are gaining importance not only in Germany, but worldwide.
“What we are building in Catena-X can also be scaled to the other data spaces of Manufacturing-X,” Kanja shares. The expert group commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action explicitly lists Catena-X in its paper “Recommendations for Action for the Development of a Circular Economy in the Automotive Industry” as part of its recommendations for the transformation of the automotive industry.
The proactive exchange of field data from OEMs and production data from suppliers allows errors to be detected four months earlier on average. Heubach says this not only saves time and money, but also prevents unnecessary recall actions: “This allows you to pinpoint much more precisely what the problem is and which vehicles are affected. This leads to huge cost savings.”
Existing customers of SAP that already have SAP Analytics Cloud or SAP Datasphere, such as BMW and its supplier Schaeffler, can immediately leverage the use case with Catena-X and SAP Quality Management. Current developments aim to making use of and expand toward SAP Business Data Cloud to fully utilize AI components.
Learn more
Those interested in becoming a partner in the digital ecosystem Catena-X can contact OnboardingCatena-X@sap.com.
Hannover Messe attendees can visit the SAP booth and see a panel at noon local time on March 31 with Oliver Ganser from BMW, Thomas Roesch from Cofinity-X, and SAP’s Nadine Kanja and Hagen Heubach.
