The automotive sector is undergoing rapid transformation driven by social and environmental megatrends and the rapid evolution of new automotive manufacturing and consumer-facing automotive technologies.

The changes to the automotive supply chain are significant and bring a host of new opportunities as well as a range of new challenges.

Parallel to this, the sector is constantly battling with multiple risks, such as natural disasters, theft, counterfeit production, and quality and safety issues. These sectors are under tight scrutiny to guarantee their components are properly manufactured to ensure the safety of their consumers. Responsible sourcing strategies play a large role in reducing potential quality risks and protecting an organization's brand and reputation. As a result, it’s imperative that automotive organizations have complete visibility into their suppliers’ practices to make sure they remain compliant with government and company regulations.

Throughout the automotive supply chain, standards help automotive companies to improve and become more resilient. 

What are the benefits of standards to the automotive supply chain?

Automobiles are among the most complex products on the market and have a correspondingly complex supply chain. Each of the thousands of parts that comprise an automobile represents a regulatory risk for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers.

Implementing the relevant automotive supply chain standards in your organization has the potential to facilitate knowledge diffusion along your automotive supply chain as well as assuring supplier’s quality and have an impact on the bargaining power equilibrium between the buyer and its supplier. Especially in the automotive industry, these aspects play an important role.

Other main benefits of automotive supply chain standards include;

• Faster turnaround of goods

• Higher revenue generation

• Reduced resource waste

• Lower expenses

• Greater return on investment (for all partners)

• Improved productivity of the entire chain

• Fewer drops in errors, losses, and delays

• Increase in procurement and buying power

• Centralized communication

• Increased innovation

To read more on the topic of innovation in the automotive industry, click here.

Key automotive supply chain standards 

Supply chain management can make or break you, which is why leveraging the right standards, in the right way, with the right parties is critical to success. Implementing globally recognized standards will help mitigate the risks of failure in the supply chain, boost customer satisfaction and make your organization resilient.

The world’s most widely adopted quality management standard is BS EN ISO 9001, used by organizations from all sectors and of all sizes to boost customer satisfaction. It sets out what’s needed to implement a quality management system – the purpose of which is to improve overall performance in your supply chain.

Another key standard is BS EN ISO 22301. This is the international standard that specifies the requirements for a business continuity management system. It helps you to identify potential threats to your automotive supply chain.

This includes extreme weather, fire, flood, natural disaster, theft, IT outage, staff illness, or terrorist attack. The BS EN ISO 22301 management system lets you identify threats relevant to your business and the critical business functions they could impact. And it allows you to put plans in place ahead of time to ensure your business doesn’t come to a standstill. Linked to this, the new standard BS ISO 22739:2020 provides fundamental terminology for blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. 

Other important supply chain standards include: 

• BS ISO 26262 Series: These standards provide guidance on how to achieve Functional Safety of a vehicle system through the implementation of a safety lifecycle that provides an approach to risk management during product development. The focus of BS ISO 26262 standards is how to address the malfunctioning behaviour of automotive systems, caused by software or hardware faults.

• BS ISO/SAE 21434: This standard provides an excellent framework that helps automotive organizations manage and protect their information assets so that they remain safe and secure. It helps you to continually review and refine the way you do this, not only for today but also for the future.

Make your automotive supply chain as resilient as possible by adding all the key automotive standards to your collection today.

Discover BSI Knowledge

There is no doubt that using standards can ensure the resilience of your automotive supply chain, building crucial trust between you and your stakeholders and consumers. With a BSI Knowledge subscription, supply chain resilience is at your fingertips with instant access to over 2,000 best practice documents related to the automotive industry. Request to learn more.