If you haven’t yet listened to or read about them, take a look at our wrap-up blogs covering episodes 1-5, episodes 6-10 and episodes 11-15 of the Auto Supply Chain Prophets podcast.
As we wrap up 2022 and roll into the holidays, I wanted to share summaries of our five latest Auto Supply Chain Prophets podcast episodes. Quistem’s Cathy Fisher and I agree, supply chain is where the money is – supply chain costs drive decisions in the automotive supplier ecosystem – thoughts to keep in mind as we start the new year.
The foundation for many of our interviews comes from the best practices presented in our Delivering on the Promise of Delivery white paper that covers “The 24 Essential Supply Chain Processes”.
Here’s a wrap-up of the latest episodes.
Episode #16: The Shift to EVs
In this episode, we’re joined by automotive industry veteran Gary Vasilash, an editor with Gardner Business Media. He has spent the last 30 years writing about automotive design, engineering, manufacturing and management. He’s also one of the jurors for the North American Car, Truck and Utility of the Year Awards, quite a singular achievement.
Gary talks about the iconic shift to electric vehicles going on in the industry right now. How can suppliers make better contingency plans when it’s nearly impossible to anticipate such situations as the pandemic and some of the other disruptions currently affecting the industry.
As technology changes with the introduction of electric vehicles, the landscape of suppliers will change. “I think one of the things that we’re going to be seeing more of as the car companies make more electric vehicles is that there’s going to be an increase in vertical integration…[they’ll be] making more things in-house and [won’t] be as reliant on suppliers…they need to keep their eye on the outsource part, and the insource part, which is a big change.” Gary suggests that auto supply chain leaders must improve digital visibility into operations and into their suppliers.
Click here to listen to the full episode.
Episode #17: The Future is Now for the Automotive Supply Chain
Gary Vasilash continues his predictions and assessments about the future of the automotive supply chain. He suggested that supply chain leaders need “to separate the product from the process.” It’s all in the execution, whether the vehicle is electric, hydrogen fuel cell or internal combustion engine based. With the right resources from a process standpoint, they’ll get costs and profits right.
Suppliers are facing the fact that while the powertrain is changing significantly, cars will still need, for example, wheels, glass, body panels, and so forth. “There will be changes but not everybody will be affected in the same way.”
We asked Gary his thoughts about EV startups: whether they will survive with so many coming on board, will they become niche players, will the OEMs buy them or merge with them. Gary thinks all these options are probable, but the rules may be changing. Some of the current startups may not last, other new companies may arrive on the scene and OEMs will likely adapt different supply chain strategies in response to the EV revolution.
Click here to listen to the full episode.
Episode #18: Addressing Staffing Issues in a Post-Pandemic World
Staffing levels are on everyone’s minds these days, from manufacturers to retailers and consumers. We met with Michele Vincent, Senior Director of Marketing and Sales at MADICORP, a temporary staffing agency that sources high-value and experienced manufacturing talent from across the country. She described the unique business model MADICORP uses to deliver manufacturing staffing. They look beyond the local talent pool and source staff from across the country, bring them into a facility to fill temporary gaps, sometimes for 6 to 9 months, and help manufacturers through a busy season or in an area of low unemployment.
For the automotive industry, a sample use case might be to provide labor at the start of a new production line while the company is working out the hiring of full-time permanent workers.
An interesting point, Michele commented that Gen Z workers are more interested in manufacturing jobs than millennials. It’s critical for companies to understand their prospective labor pool to attract the best talent.
She strongly encourages supply chain managers to learn more about temporary labor services to respond to current shortages. “In this talent market you need to be creative. It’s important to try different things. What’s going to work for a small manufacturer in the Midwest might not work for a large manufacturer on one of the coasts. And so, to be successful at finding talent, you need to try new things. You need to keep up in terms of technology and onboarding.”
Click here to listen to the full episode.
Episode #19: 24 Essential Processes to Build a Foundation of Supply Chain Management
In this episode, Cathy Fisher and I dive headlong into two of the most widely consulted, but notoriously complex protocols for automotive supply chain management: the Automotive Industry Action Group’s (AIAG) Global Materials Management Operational Guidelines/Logistical Evaluation (MMOG/LE) and International Automotive Task Force (IATF) 16949. We actually wrote the Delivering on the Promise of Delivery white paper based on these protocols.
The protocols have been in circulation for many years and, in part, describe the connections between quality and delivery, which are so often siloed in practice. In an earlier blog, we described how we created our list of 24 essential processes and vetted them with the AIAG supply chain steering committee, and over 50 OEMs and other automotive manufacturers, including OEMs and Tier 1 and 2 suppliers.
We organized the 24 processes into five categories:
- Business planning
- Program planning
- Operational planning
- Operational control
- Performance
Terry points out, “we started introducing them to other verticals. So, outside automotive. And, we were just this past week, we were with a life sciences company, using the 24 processes. And they completely related to them. And they made basically no changes to those 24 processes. They were like, yep, we understand them. We got it. We’re gonna use them just like the exact same way. We’ve done them with industrials, consumer products. And nobody’s disagreed. We, Cathy and I have not had to make one change to those 24 processes.”
Click here to listen to the full episode.
Episode #20: Sneak Peek
This episode is a teaser and sneak peek into the interviews we conducted at the OESA Supplier Summit Conference in Novi, Michigan in November starting with our interview with Dan Sharkey, attorney, co-founder and member of Brooks Wilkins Sharkey & Turco PLLC who specializes in automotive supply chain contract disputes.
Click here to listen to the full episode.
Want to learn more? Visit the Auto Supply Chain Prophets website to download and catch up on all the latest podcast episodes.
This article was co-written by Cathy Fisher, founder and president of Quistem, LLC.
