In early 2022, we started our official cooperation with Yanfeng in the EMEA region, which includes 13 plants in Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia and South Africa. It quickly became clear that the project would involve great complexity and challenges.
However, Yanfeng has achieved remarkable results in just one and a half years of cooperation. Yanfeng's success story shows what the path to efficient spare parts management with SPARETECH can look like.
Yanfeng is a leading global automotive supplier known for its expertise in interior, exterior, seating, cockpit electronics and passive safety solutions. With more than 80 years of experience in the industry, Yanfeng now has a presence in over 240 locations worldwide and employs approximately 57,000 people. This strong presence establishes Yanfeng as a major player in the automotive industry.
Initial situation: unclean spare parts data across plants
Prior to working with SPARETECH, each of the 13 Yanfeng plants in the EMEA region used its own ERP/MRP systems and processes, resulting in an unclean material master with numerous duplicates, inconsistencies and missing information. As a result, there was no visibility into available spare parts and the benefits of cross-plant collaboration could not be realized.
In addition, the costs for warehousing, personnel and procurement were very high due to the high manual effort and the lack of transparency. It was clear that a solution was needed to address these challenges and increase efficiency in spare parts management. Thus began the collaboration between Yanfeng and SPARETECH.
The goal: ensuring a uniform and clean spare parts material master
The first step in our ongoing collaboration was to unify the various material masters of the 13 plants into a central, common material master for the EMEA region. This was the basis for establishing a successful workflow in both central systems: IBM Maximo (ERP system) and SPARETECH, to prevent new unclean data from entering the material master.
The results: Clean and integrated spare parts data in all plants
Massive successes were achieved in two of the three main Insights categories:
- Mass data enrichment of over 24,000 records with original manufacturer information from the SPARETECH database in a cross-plant collaborative effort in early 2023.
- Over 7,700 duplicate material numbers were successfully and efficiently removed in just 3.5 months.
These successes were made possible by the consistently goal-oriented, pragmatic and intensive cooperation between Yanfeng and SPARETECH as well as the excellent teamwork across different departments.
To be and remain prepared for future challenges in spare parts management, Yanfeng plans to address existing obsolescences and establish continuous obsolescence management processes in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Yanfeng shows in a pragmatic way what is possible in only one and a half years of efficient spare parts management together with SPARETECH. It is not the end of a success story, but just the beginning.
