ELBA
Experiences of Suppliers with B2B Applications
Lifecycle Design for Global Collaborative Production (large, EU-IST-2001-37603, IMS-2001-00009)
Researchers:
Dr. R. Alard, N. Rüegg, E. Gerdes, A. Minkus
Partners:
Volkswagen AG, Audi AG, and several key suppliers of the Volkswagen Group
Financed by:
Volkswagen AG (research cooperation)
Web site:
externe Seite www.VWGroupSupply.com
Motivation:
The Volkswagen Group already manages nearly the entire procurement volume of more than € 50 billion via the Internet. Work on the Internet platform began in early summer of 2000, and it is now up and running. Under the domainVWGroupSupply.com the most important components – Online Catalogs, Online Inquiries, Online Negotiations and Capacity Management – have already been intro-duced to all brands and regions of the Volkswagen Group. The analysis of the impact of the Business-to-Business (B2B) Applications of the VWGroupSupply.com from a supplier view can be used as a ba-sis for improvements and further developments of VWGroupSupply.com as well as for the promotion of B2B processes among suppliers and internal users with the Volkswagen Group.
The suppliers’ view s will be analyzed both generally (survey among a broad supplier base) and spe-cifically (detailed analysis with selected suppliers).
Objectives:
A scientific poll of users of the VWGroupSupply.com platform will be conducted using the communi-cation tools ofVWGroupSupply.com and an online survey. Additionally, a more specific analysis of the processes of a subset of key suppliers will be performed by conducting several interviews based on the target areas of costs, quality, flexibility, innovation, and delivery. ELBA will show the success fac-tors and requirements for the suppliers’ use of the B2B applications. The results of ELBA will be pub-lished as an overall survey and as two case studies on two selected B2B applications.
The following activities have already been completed:
The survey of 3,000 suppliers of Volkswagen was successfully conducted. Around 1,000 of the suppliers completed the online questionnaire. The results were analyzed and then presented on several occasions: internally with Volkswagen, externally with suppliers at the VW B2B-Day in Wolfsburg, and scientifically at the eChallenges 2005 in Ljubljana (Slovenia). For the detailed case studies, we defined the selection of the particular B2B applications and the relevant suppliers. Several workshops with internal and external users of B2B applications were conducted, delivering valuable input for the case studies.