Smart Connection to the Future

see. think. act.

Smart Connection to the Future

Interview with CIO Dr. Jürgen Sturm

Min Reading Time

The only solution for many challenges in the automotive industry is to join forces. Dr. Jürgen Sturm, CIO of ZF and Catena-X-Board Member about the advantages of the partner network.

Susanne Szarowski,

Susanne Szarowski has been in corporate communications at ZF for fourteen years. As a member of the editorial team, she is responsible for digitization and software.

Dr. Sturm, ZF is one of the founding members of the Catena-X initiative. What is its purpose?

Catena-X is about networking with partners along the entire supply chain in the automotive industry. One aim is to increase efficiency and effectiveness in the existing process chains. We also aim to get ready to meet requirements for which there are no solutions at present, as in the case of the carbon footprint. Calculations from individual companies are useless here; all suppliers need to provide reliable figures using a standardized system.

"We want to know what CO₂ footprint a new passenger car has left even before it clocks up a single kilometer."

So suppliers like ZF will inevitably have to be part of Catena-X?

Absolutely. The automotive industry is highly networked and based on the division of labor. Managing the complex supply chains poses a major challenge. Data exchange across company boundaries has always been important in our industry. At Catena-X, we are now working together to develop secure new standards and data exchange mechanisms.

Could you perhaps be a little more specific?

The harmonization of business partner addresses is a good example. Every company maintains these master data. If we all do this together, far less work is involved and the data are always up-to-date. For the solution to fulfill data protection, data security and confidentiality requirements, technical and organizational preconditions must be met.

Traceability of Components: Catena-X enables traceability along the entire automotive value chain. In the future, hardware and software inputs will be traceable from production to recycling.

Modular Production: Networked and automated processes as well as optimized planning increase effectiveness and flexibility in production.

Real Time Control and Simulation: Material flow is the foundation of successful value creation. Predictive online control and simulation stabilizes manufacturing and delivery processes and ensures greater efficiency.

Demand and Capacity Management: Catena-X enables the secure exchange of demand and capacity data as well as collaboration between all partners involved in the automotive network.

Quality Management: Holistic quality management across the entire value chain makes it possible to react quickly and prevent quality defects.

Business Partner Master Data Management: Maintaining business partner data is very time-consuming for all companies. Catena-X follows a concept that identifies, links and harmonizes identical data on business partners, locations and addresses from different sources.

Digital Behavior Twins: Digital twins provide information on characteristics or individual assemblies of a vehicle. Catena-X enables information to be linked for reliable forecasts across supply chain boundaries.

Circular Economy: Catena-X is developing a digital map of the circular economy in the automotive industry - together with more than 2,000 partners and across all levels of the value chain.

Manufacturing as a Service: In the Catena-X data ecosystem, interested parties, suppliers and on-demand manufacturing platforms can be found to offer manufacturing steps as a service.

Sustainability: Catena-X develops methods and standards to reduce CO2 impacts. Software apps and a set of rules help improve CO2 levels across vehicle manufacturing and the supply chain.

What are these preconditions?

The data are not collected centrally in the Catena-X network but remain in the specific company to which they belong. Data connectors then interconnect the data only for the particular use case. This is done using what we call Eclipse Dataspace Connector technology. The data connector has a control and a data level. On the control level, the corresponding authorizations are negotiated; on the data level, the required data then flow to the sources – and only there.

Catena-X is based on the principles of the European cloud infrastructure Gaia-X. Is this compatible with the partnership between ZF and U.S. hyperscaler Microsoft?

Cloud providers such as Microsoft are also partners of Gaia-X and support the Gaia-X criteria according to European data protection law. Gaia-X and Catena-X are by no means limited to European companies. Japanese or North American OEMs, such as Ford, who are already members, have also expressed interest, because multinational enterprises must have connectivity in their particular economic areas and adapt to local requirements. This, of course, also applies the other way round.

Implementation of the European cloud infrastructure project Gaia-X is reportedly fairly sluggish. How does this affect the ten Catena-X use cases?

All Catena-X use cases are on schedule. In May 2021, we founded the initiative together with 50 companies. We have now grown to over 100 partners. In early August 2021, we started implementing individual use cases; the first software release will be issued this year. I think the pace here is impressive. At Catena-X, around 850 employees from different companies are working on cross-company applications in an agile software development environment, including 70 ZF employees.

Which of the ten Catena-X use cases are particularly interesting for ZF?

We are focusing particularly on improvements in the area known as Business Partner and Master Data Management. We are also concentrating on obtaining more reliable data from the supply chain. This involves issues such as the carbon footprint, the requirements of the circular economy or how the supply chain duty of care can be implemented. However, ZF is also participating in five other use cases.

What are the next steps at Catena-X?

This year, we want to make initial solutions available for the market and bring them to industrial maturity through operating companies. In addition, we want to grow with other participants in the network and also involve value-added partners from other regions. Finally, raw materials for electric mobility are largely mined and further processed outside Europe with the circular economy.

With the joint venture Cofinity-X, ten partners are driving forward the implementation of the Catena-X network. Where is the focus?

With the founding of Cofinity-X, ten partners from Catena-X are taking the next step on the road to implementing the Catena-X initiative. The joint venture, which includes BASF, BMW, Henkel, Mercedes-Benz, SAP, Schaeffler, Siemens, T-Systems, Volkswagen and ZF, will be one of the first operating companies to offer products and services for the secure exchange of data along the automotive supply chain. Our goal is to add value to Cofinity-X customers through our applications and services for sustainability, traceability, circular economy or harmonization of business partner data.