Autoliv’s Supply Chain Risk Management Journey

Autoliv’s Supply Chain Risk Management Journey

Autoliv’s Supply Chain Risk Management Journey

In February, Klaus Niebur, the director of global supply chain risk management at Autoliv, and Jan Thiessen, the managing director at targetP!, spoke on best practices on supply chain risk management at ARC Advisory Group’s Digital Transformation in Industry conference.

Autoliv is the world’s largest safety system supplier in automotive industry. This global, Tier 1 manufacturer is headquartered in Stockholm and had revenues of over $8 billion last year. It supplies airbags, seatbelts, and steering wheels to most of the Automotive OEMs – companies like Renault/Nissan, Volkswagen, etc. targetP!, in turn, is a boutique procurement consultancy.

Autoliv’s Continuing Journey in Supply Chain Risk Management

Mr. Niebur’s and Thiessen’s presentation was taped in November of 2021 and then played online in February. At the time we spoke, Mr. Niebur spoke of risk management as a continuous improvement journey that would never end. There were several things they were looking to accomplish in the near term. I wanted to circle back to Klaus and Jan and get caught up on their journey.

Steve: Klaus, when we talked, you mentioned Autoliv was already doing digital supplier management, had digital sourcing solutions, and was looking at real-time transportation visibility solutions to provide better predicted times of arrival for inbound and outbound shipments. In short, this risk management solution needed to integrate into your IT ecosystem. Your future vision was for risk management to be seamlessly integrated into an advanced control tower. Can you talk about how this journey is going?

Klaus: This is correct and it is still our goal to create this Control Tower. It will link all initiatives within the supply chain function and be enabled by our digital solutions and all data sources. And we are making progress.

Read more Autoliv’s Supply Chain Risk Management Journey

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Supply Chains in Advanced Markets Should Become More Agile, Says Atradius

Atradius, a consultancy specializing in trade credit insurance, surety and debt collections, maintains that the global economy has continued to gain momentum over the past months, with a 3.1% expansion projected for this year.

Higher inflation, falling unemployment, and strengthening Purchasing Manager Indices (PMIs) all suggest higher GDP growth in advanced markets.

Atradius analysts observe that the U.S. economy leads this trend while the recovery in the eurozone becomes increasingly entrenched. The outlook for emerging markets is also brighter, as Brazil and Russia are emerging from recession, and access to finance remains favorable. While the global economic outlook is more robust than in previous years, political uncertainty remains a downside risk to stability.

However, the main challenges to the global outlook – the threat of deflation, negative bond yields, austerity, and low commodity prices – are slowly phasing out.

Global trade is supporting this recovery. After a 1.3% expansion in 2016, trade growth (12-month rolling average, y-o-y) has picked up to 3.3% as of July 2017. The stronger-than-expected expansion is being driven by intra-regional trade flows in Asia and strong import demand from North America.

Despite political uncertainty, most high-frequency indicators point to sustained growth: the global composite PMI posted held steady at 54 in September, pointing to a solid and stable rate of expansion. This has motivated some dramatic upward revisions of trade growth forecasts in 2017. The WTO raised its 2017 forecast for merchandise trade growth to 3.6% from 2.4%.

Read more at Supply Chains in Advanced Markets Should Become More Agile, Says Atradius

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