Innovative logistics is a vital part of transformable factories in the automotive industry

Abstract

With increasing product and process complexity and with advancing globalization, cross-company assessment and standardized optimization of procurement, production and sales processes are becoming increasingly important. Using innovative methods and technologies, continuous logistics processes in the form of supply chain management (SCM) will in the future become a key success factor in ensuring the global competitiveness of companies in the automotive industry 1. Given over 70% external share in value added and rising customer orientation, vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers need to confront the new tasks and challenges by leveraging the supply chain collaboration (SCC). The crucial competitive element is now the efficiency and flexibility in the supply chains and networks taken as a whole, rather than in one individual company2. © 2006 Springer.