The power of partnership Bosch Group

THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIP

The Bosch Group is a leading multinational engineering and electronics company and the world’s largest supplier of automotive components. Philip Yorke looks at the recent technological advances achieved by the company and the suppliers that support it with their unrivalled commitment to service and excellence.

The Bosch Group was founded in 1886 by Robert Bosch as the ‘Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electronic Engineering’.

Today the Bosch Group employs around 360,000 associates worldwide and in 2014 generated sales of more than €49 billion. The group’s operations are divided into four key business sectors: Mobility Solutions, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods and Energy & Building Technology. Last year Bosch applied for more than 4600 patents. Its strategic objective is to create solutions for a connected life by improving the quality of life worldwide with innovative products and services. Outstanding performers

For the past 14 years, the Bosch Group has recognised its top suppliers with a special ‘Bosch Global Supplier Award’. This year the company’s Technology and Services division honoured 56 suppliers from 11 countries. By presenting this award, Bosch recognises outstanding performance in the manufacture and supply of products and services. These are notable in the areas of quality, costs, logistics and innovations. “The Bosch Global Supplier Award honours our top suppliers, who play such a key role in Bosch’s success,” said Dr Volkmar Denner, chairman of the Bosch board of management, at the award ceremony in Stuttgart.

“Our suppliers are important partners in helping us shape the connected world. We want to work with them to develop beneficial solutions for our customers.” The theme of this year’s award ceremony was ‘Power of Partnership – connected intelligence’. Bosch strongly believes that long-term partnerships and the early involvement of suppliers are the key to future success.

Bosch works with over 35,000 suppliers worldwide and this year the company has chosen to honour the top 58, many of which have now won the honour at least five times. Almost half the companies honoured are headquartered outside Germany, with one quarter of those selected coming from Asia.

Connected supply chains

\Web-enabled products and internet based services form one of the cornerstones of Bosch’s sales growth for the future. The company says that customer focus and customer benefit are crucial for success. This makes it even more important to have competitive and connected supply chains. “Our goal is to achieve excellence,” says Denner. “Strong, long term partnerships with suppliers are essential to that goal and are also the key drivers of networked solutions. Trust, transparency, agility, quality, delivery, capability and competitive prices are at the core of our collaboration with our suppliers.”

Bosch now wants to involve its suppliers at an even earlier stage in the product creation process, and to work with them to develop solutions for both industry and society. “In this context connectivity

is by no means only a subject for Bosch. It encompasses the entire value chain and we will only remain competitive if we all systematically embrace further connectivity,” the company said.

It is for this reason that Bosch recognises particularly forwardlooking projects with a supplier in the ‘Innovations’ category. This year the winners were IMS Gear GmbH, Infineon Technologies AG and 4flow. Based in Berlin, 4flow received an award for its support in the development of a globally standardised transport management system. Bosch is using new processes and systems developed by 4flow to organise its worldwide road transport operations even more efficiently and economically.

In 2014, the Bosch Group’s purchasing volume came to more than €25 billion. Europe still accounts for the lion’s share of this at around 60 per cent of the global purchasing volume. Outside Europe, procurement is centred on China, the US and Japan. Purchasing today mainly involves production materials such as turned parts, electronic components and pressed, drawn or bent plastic parts. Collaborating with local suppliers worldwide is key to assuring the continued growth of the Bosch Group.

Innovative solutions for life

Mobility Solutions is the largest Bosch Group business sector. In 2014 its sales amounted to €33.3 billion, equal to 68 per cent of total group sales. This sector combines the group’s expertise in three mobility domains: automation, electrification and connectivity.

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In the automotive sector electric steering is expanding fast as an independent component in driver assistance systems, such as lane keeping or parking assistance. Today seven out of ten steering systems produced by Bosch have an electric drive. These advanced systems are coming off Bosch production lines in Europe, North America and China.

In the field of energy and building technology Bosch is achieving energy savings of up to 30 per cent with its efficiency solutions for industrial customers. In the consumer electronics sector, Bosch Sensortec has achieved the position of the leading global provider of innovative MEMS-based sensors and solutions. Its latest products enable new applications and innovative solutions across the entire spectrum of consumer electronics. Today three out of four smart phones worldwide use Bosche Sensortec sensors. In addition, Bosch Sensortec is the market leader in the environmental consumer sensor space, providing barometric pressure sensors, humidity sensors and as announced recently, integrated indoor air quality sensors.

In the industrial technology sector Bosch Rexroth is a leading global provider of drive and control technologies. Regardless of the ‘motion task’ faced by customers throughout the world, there is a Bosch Rexroth team with the local expertise and know-how embracing all drive and control technologies from more than 30 industries. Bosche Rexroth represents a strong reliable partner for mobile applications, engineering, factory automation and renewable energies.

Bosch is just as innovative when it comes to providing service solutions and plans to set up a new division, ‘Bosch Global Service Solutions’. It will bring together all the current internal and external services offered by the company. As well as continuing successful services such as ‘eCall’, customer support and business process outsourcing, it will also become the comprehensive Bosch internal provider of shared service functions relating to administration and sales. The new service from Bosch will be commence in January 2016. n

For further details of Bosch’s latest innovative products and services visit: www.bosch.com