Blockchain ensures transparency along BMW’s supply chain
International supply chains in the automotive industry are highly complex. They typically have a large number of players at different supply levels. They are also often subject to very rapid changes. Therefore, great efforts may be required to clearly trace the origin or delivery route of a component, for example. Until now, it has been common practice for the many partners involved to manage their data in isolation, each on their own. The respective IT systems of the companies involved were not always able to communicate with each other consistently. For the BMW Group’s purchasing experts and their suppliers, ensuring transparency therefore involved a high level of manual effort. In order to ensure seamless traceability of components and immediate data transparency in complex supply chains for all partners involved – virtually “at the push of a button” – the BMW Group launched a project called “PartChain”. This project enables data in the supply chain to be recorded and transactions to be checked at any time and made tamper-proof.
In 2019, the pilot project focused on pure part tracking. In the long term, the BMW Group also hopes that the project will provide complete traceability of critical raw materials – from the mine to the smelter. Wendt: “With this project, we want to take digitization in purchasing at the BMW Group to the next level,” says Andreas Wendt, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG. “Our vision is an open platform by means of which data can be exchanged and shared securely and anonymously across industries within supply chains.
PartChain uses both block chain and cloud technologies (e.g. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure). The origin of individual components can thus be traced in a tamper-proof manner across the partners involved. Two of a total of 31 BMW Group plants (Spartanburg/USA and Dingolfing/Germany) and three locations of the supplier Automotive Lighting have already participated in the pilot project in 2019. This year, the platform is to be rolled out to a further ten suppliers.
A cross-company solution would enable all partners involved to link and coordinate their business processes more closely across company boundaries. However, common standards and control models are essential to fully exploit the potential of an open platform. The BMW Group has therefore also co-founded the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI) in 2018, a cross-industry initiative of 120 automotive, mobility and technology companies. Within MOBI, BMW heads a working group for supply chain issues. The MOBI members pursue the goal of jointly helping block-chain technology achieve a breakthrough in the mobility sector.
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