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Bosch continues to expand its digital supply chains

16. Bosch Global Supplier Award

Awards for the best suppliers worldwide

  • Forty-seven suppliers honored for excellence
  • Bosch’s purchasing volume to reach more than 40 billion euros in 2019
  • Digital procurement processes with 43,000 suppliers and service providers
  • Bosch CFO Stefan Asenkerschbaumer: “Digitalized supply chains reduce both costs and CO₂ emissions.”
Sven Kahn

Sven Kahn

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Stuttgart / Blaichach, Germany – On its path to becoming a leading provider of IoT and mobility solutions, Bosch is further expanding its digital supply chains. By 2021, the company wants to use cloud and platform solutions to handle more than 85 percent of its global purchasing volume. “In a connected world, digitalized supply chains are crucial if we are to meet the personalized, highly specific requirements of our customers more quickly. Those who fail to digitalize will lose out,” said Prof. Stefan Asenkerschbaumer, deputy chairman of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH, at the international ceremony to present the Bosch Global Supplier Awards. “Small and medium-sized enterprises in particular still have a lot of potential to generate further growth and improve their competitive positions.” As Asenkerschbaumer explained, Bosch is planning, for example, to fully digitalize the receipt of incoming goods together with its suppliers. Another goal is to enable the company’s suppliers around the world to view Bosch’s manufacturing needs in real time, thereby optimizing transportation networks and lowering CO₂ emissions. Across the globe, around 37,000 Bosch associates work in purchasing and logistics; they keep around 270 manufacturing plants supplied with more than 300 million parts every day.

Stable procurement spending despite cooling economy
Speaking to some 100 representatives of the supplier industry at the awards event near Blaichach, Asenkerschbaumer said: “Despite a sluggish economy, we expect our purchasing volume in 2019 to reach more than 40 billion euros.” Over the last ten years, the company’s total purchasing volume – for raw materials, services, and capital goods – exceeded 340 billion euros. This makes Bosch an important customer for its suppliers. To secure mutual success, the Bosch CFO believes it is necessary to deploy innovative purchasing and logistics strategies to achieve cost advantages at an early stage, and to fully digitalize the company’s supply networks: “It’s not just in the realm of competitive prices that we expect an innovative approach from our supply chain partners; we also want them to work with us to conserve natural resources,” he said. Bosch only recently announced its plan to make its manufacturing and administrative operations climate neutral at all locations worldwide by 2020. As the first global industrial enterprise to do so, Bosch wants to set an example here and motivate its suppliers to achieve carbon neutrality as well.

Bosch Global Supplier Awards: honoring excellence
In his address, the Bosch CFO Asenkerschbaumer paid tribute to the company’s award-winning suppliers: “Our suppliers and service providers are our partners, and central to Bosch’s competitiveness and transformation.” At yesterday evening’s ceremony, Bosch bestowed its coveted Global Supplier Awards on its 47 best international suppliers for their exceptional performance in the production and supply of products as well as the provision of services. A panel of judges selected the award-winners in the categories of indirect materials, raw materials, and components by business sector. A special category of award was presented to suppliers of products, processes, and technologies that offered Bosch a lot of innovation potential. Bosch has been presenting these biennial awards to honor supplier excellence since 1987, and they are highly regarded in the industry.

Innovation category: three winners for the first time
This year, the award in the Innovation category was conferred on three different companies for the first time. Catalytic, a U.S.-based cloud platform operator, won over the judges with a digital DIY procedure for process automation. The ease with which processes can be automated using this procedure promises efficiency gains for users. Bosch also honored Ecoroll, a German manufacturer, for its innovative process in which hydrostatic tools help deep-roll complex contours in small holes to increase a component’s service life. Japan Display, a Japanese manufacturer, won its award for a curved display used in vehicle instrument clusters. Despite having the same dimensions as the previous model, the new model boasts a larger display panel.

A list of all the winners of the Bosch Global Supplier Awards is available here.

About Bosch

The Bosch Group is a leading global supplier of technology and services. It employs roughly 429,000 associates worldwide (as of December 31, 2023). The company generated sales of 91.6 billion euros in 2023. Its operations are divided into four business sectors: Mobility, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. With its business activities, the company aims to use technology to help shape universal trends such as automation, electrification, digitalization, connectivity, and an orientation to sustainability. In this context, Bosch’s broad diversification across regions and industries strengthens its innovativeness and robustness. Bosch uses its proven expertise in sensor technology, software, and services to offer customers cross-domain solutions from a single source. It also applies its expertise in connectivity and artificial intelligence in order to develop and manufacture user-friendly, sustainable products. With technology that is “Invented for life,” Bosch wants to help improve quality of life and conserve natural resources. The Bosch Group comprises Robert Bosch GmbH and its roughly 470 subsidiary and regional companies in over 60 countries. Including sales and service partners, Bosch’s global manufacturing, engineering, and sales network covers nearly every country in the world. Bosch’s innovative strength is key to the company’s further development. At 136 locations across the globe, Bosch employs some 90,000 associates in research and development, of which nearly 48,000 are software engineers.

The company was set up in Stuttgart in 1886 by Robert Bosch (1861–1942) as “Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering.” The special ownership structure of Robert Bosch GmbH guarantees the entrepreneurial freedom of the Bosch Group, making it possible for the company to plan over the long term and to undertake significant upfront investments in the safeguarding of its future. Ninety-four percent of the share capital of Robert Bosch GmbH is held by Robert Bosch Stiftung GmbH, a charitable foundation. The remaining shares are held by Robert Bosch GmbH and by a corporation owned by the Bosch family. The majority of voting rights are held by Robert Bosch Industrietreuhand KG. It is entrusted with the task of safeguarding the company’s long-term existence and in particular its financial independence – in line with the mission handed down in the will of the company’s founder, Robert Bosch.

Additional information is available online at www.bosch.com, www.iot.bosch.com, www.bosch-press.com.

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