Federal-Mogul says it has strengthened critical areas of its supply chain to help protect its customers from failures outside its control.
The global supplier made the comments to just-auto at its recent Technology Day in Nuremberg where six of its top German engineers outlined new advances in production processes and products.
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Recent events at chemicals giant Evonik Industries’ factory in Germany illustrate just how sensitive huge supply chains can be to disruption in services, with the massive explosion at the Marl plant severely limiting availability of the Nylon 12 resin.
Nylon 12 is used for coatings and connector applications in automotive fuel handling and brake systems, with suppliers around the world having to urgently assess alternatives and their verification.
“We get every day fresh liquid aluminium and if this supply chain is somehow broken, we could stop production, so we make sure we use two different suppliers,” Federal-Mogul Nuremberg chief engineer, design, analysis & product engineering, Arnd Baberg, told just-auto.
“We know pretty much about the really sensitive areas and critical processes. It is not just in the supply chain but in the factory itself. The idea is we have an engineering team in Nuremberg – a full production facility – and a team which is the link between the engineering and production people.”
Baberg said the company tried to replicate its systems across its network such as in Poland, Turkey and China, although this was not always 100% possible due to some joint-venture arrangements but that its strategy was to have “a global footprint.”
Evonik has previously estimated it would restart Nylon 12 production in October at the earliest.
