Industry: Automotive Aftermarket

Project description
A Japanese Tier 1 supplier supplies automotive OEMs from its plants on all continents. It wants to expand and efficiently manage its global aftermarket activities in all regions.

Objective
Implement a decentralized product information management system (PIM) that accesses product data from the various internal systems and externally sourced market data and which the aftermarket sales organizations in Asia, Europe and America use to manage their respective regional product portfolios.

Efficiently control the product portfolio in the spare parts business globally with the new PIM

The project in keywords:

  • Transformation to decentralized organization and processes in the aftermarket
  • Information gap in IAM potential per country closed by purchasing from external data providers
  • Use of external consulting firm for pre-selection of supplier shortens process and provides expertise in a short time
  • Agile sprints ensure initial commissioning before the end of 6 months

A process geared towards series production is not suitable for the aftermarket

IHI Corporation, a Japanese €15 billion conglomerate, is the global number 3 in exhaust gas turbochargers and supplies automotive OEMs as a Tier 1 supplier from 6 plants worldwide.

In the downstream Independent Aftermarket (IAM) business, which supplies the manufacturer-independent spare parts market, regional Group sales organizations (VO) in Japan, China, Thailand, the USA and Europe supply independent distributors with exhaust gas turbochargers under their own Group brand. The distributors, in turn, supply the free workshop market via wholesalers and retailers.

The group is geared towards series production processes and supplies the series products to the regionally based OEM, which installs them in its vehicles and sells them worldwide. As a rule, a Tier 1 does not know which vehicle models the series products are installed in, nor to which countries which quantities are exported. In contrast, the needs in the spare parts market arise from the number of vehicles registered in the countries, the Vehicles in Operation (VIO), the age of the vehicles and the average mileage. The different vehicle fleets in the regions and countries result in different requirements for the regional product portfolio.

The Interim Manager (IM) Christian Lukas managed the global IAM business on behalf of the group headquarters in Yokohama, Japan, and optimized processes from markets/customers via the VO to regional procurement/production.

He convinced the relevant stakeholders of the need to invest in a modern Product Information Management System (PIM) in order to efficiently manage the group-wide product portfolio in the IAM and improve the IAM result.

PIM pre-selection with the support of an external consultancy, agile implementation
IM established a global project team and commissioned the external consultancy PROTEMA, Stuttgart, to analyze the market and draw up a shortlist of potential suppliers. The requirements for the future PIM were specified as a real-time system with global access to data from existing internal data sources and externally sourced data.

As a result of a selection process, Bertsch Innovation (BI), Stuttgart, was chosen as the supplier and commissioned to carry out the PIM customizing using agile project methodology.
IM agreed strict specifications from the corporate headquarters for the IT security structure with BI and the cloud provider and anchored these in the PIM.

A key component of the project’s success was communication: In addition to the regular coordination at a global project level and with the external partners PROTEMA and BI, the continuous exchange at the various levels was decisive: Group, region, country, location, operating mode, department, employee.

After completion of the essential modules, the PIM was gradually rolled out in the respective VO and used operationally.

Decentralized management of the product portfolio implemented

The PIM software is located on a server in Germany and enables 24/7 access in real time via global licenses. Internal product data (e.g. dimensions, weight, OEM numbers, production volumes…) and drawings can be uploaded via interfaces from the regional IT systems (e.g. ERP). External data (such as VIO data per country, OEM cross-references, OEM replacement references and OEM numbers for which vehicles/series/models in which years) are purchased regionally from established third-party providers and also imported into the PIM via interfaces. Certain additional product features can be set manually.

The main advantages of the PIM:
Data quality increased and standardized; response time minimized
➔ All data is available globally and live – no more error-prone communication with e-mail and Excel

IAM requirements per region/country/district/city/vehicle are available
➔ Unused sales potential can be addressed in a targeted manner

Actively manage product portfolio
➔ Procurement and warehousing can be optimized regionally via features such as product launch, phase out and bans

Due to the considerable investment volume, the IM selected an innovative procurement and financing model and negotiated and coordinated it with the parties involved: the European Group organization purchased the PIM including hosting and maintenance from BI and resold it to the Japanese Group headquarters. The latter leases the PIM to the five globally distributed IAM sales organizations over 5 years – thus the costs are predictable and relatively distributed.

Finally, the IM described the processes and handed over the project to a group-wide IAM team, which continues to operate the PIM successfully.