How BMW Accelerated Supply Chain Efficiency with Data

Accelerating efficiency with supply chain analytics

Manufacturers face complexity in managing their supply chain. Issues such as product shortages or delays, lack of visibility, and inconsistent pricing across suppliers can add to costs and result in missed deadlines.

Teradata Vantage™ provides answers—supporting BMW Group moving parts from a myriad of suppliers in one of the most complex supply chains in the world.

Vantage for supply chain analytics provides visibility, transparency, and efficiencies across supply chains to ensure manufacturers have the right materials at the right locations, at the right time.

If certain parts are being consumed faster than planned or there’s a part failure, manufacturers need to know as quickly as possible to take corrective actions.

Making the supply chain a well-oiled machine

Vehicle manufacturers must avoid costly disruptions in their supply chain to keep cars rolling off assembly lines. Vantage enables BMW Group to see granular details about suppliers, pricing, and key performance indicators (KPIs) that are shared across all process partners. This allows insights into pricing across all suppliers and processing plants. The supply chain analytics can identify if one location is paying a different price for the same part from the same supplier than another plant, and if so, why it’s happening.

The analytic software platform makes data pervasive as over 30 million parts move through the supply chain each day.

Vantage integrates supplier data, identifies problems that could impact any of the manufacturing plants, and finds answers to cost effectively and efficiently move materials to facilities.

Vantage provides transparency and line of sight across shipping and logistics processes so that supply team analysts can see where there are potential gaps or risks.

This includes best courses of action to mitigate risks and optimize the supply chain. Creating an end-to-end view of logistics can pinpoint where a part is at any given moment, whether it’s the middle of the ocean, in a warehouse, on a delivery truck, or on a shelf awaiting installation.

Vantage answers questions that are previously unanswered:

Shipping
What happens with materials on the way to overseas plants?

Cost
What are cost drivers in the supply chain and how can they be influenced?

Performance and Collaboration

How are logistics providers performing and how are they working together with suppliers?

Volume

How is delivery volume expected to change in the future?

Better answers accelerate better outcomes

Every supplier and part involved in a supply chain produces data, which adds up to massive volumes.

Vantage integrates disparate data from all available sources to identify ways to improve processes to make the supply chain a more strategic, value-added asset.

By integrating the data, Vantage gives BMW Group transparency into shipping, including shipping overseas.

Reducing impact of supply chain issues.

The supply chain analytics help identify when a container is behind schedule and if this poses a risk to production. Knowing as soon as possible about delays and the impact on production allows BMW Group to determine the most appropriate and cost-effective action to keep cars rolling off the assembly line.

This lets analysts use SQL or another language of their choice to get answers to business and supply chain questions.

The platform can tell BMW Group how changing a supplier or a cost adjustment in logistics can affect the total cost of a vehicle. Teradata allows for a single view of shared KPIs for logistic providers and suppliers.

Centrally tracking and reporting on a global supply network gives BMW Group the transparency, speed, and efficiency to reduce supply costs and accelerate production.

By bringing together all data sources and providing visibility into the supply chain, Vantage can monitor the progress of every vehicle, letting BMW Group know the associated logistics and supply chain costs of every vehicle produced globally. The result is minimal downtime and on-time deliveries to meet customer demand.

More capabilities under the hood

Vantage brings together 70 interfaces of suppliers, logistic providers, packaging plants, carriers, overseas plants, and production programs. The system updates every 15 minutes, generating more than 400 million entries per month, and is on pace to generate 63 terabytes of data through 2020.

Learn more about Vantage

BMW Group's answer:

Driving complexity out of a global supply chain.

Using data to move over 30 million parts, daily, through an automotive manufacturer’s supply chain.