Catena-X Automotive Network – Digitalization of ­supply chains

Initial situation: Disrupted supply chains

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges for global supply chains, particularly in the automotive industry. At the same time, the crisis opened up the opportunity to fundamentally digitalize existing processes and make them resilient. In this context, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWi) decided to support targeted funding measures for digitalizing supply chains. The Catena-X Automotive Network, a lighthouse project in this area, received over 100 million euros in funding to enable end-to-end digitalization in the automotive industry. 

Objective

As the first use case of Gaia-X, Catena-X develops a collaborative, decentralized data and service ecosystem for the automotive industry and its complex supply chains. An open data space enables all participants along the value chain to work together and optimize their business processes with data support. A standardized and modular use case architecture reduces time-to-market and implementation costs and creates space for innovation.

The Manufacturing-X initiative, which was launched later, builds on Catena-X and aims to establish similar interoperable data ecosystems for various industries. One example is Factory-X for the factory equipment industry.

Role of Fraunhofer IOSB

As Fraunhofer IOSB, we have played a major role in designing one Catena-X pillar and introduced production-related topics into the project. These topics are anchored in the three use cases of modular production, real-time control and simulation, and manufacturing as a service (MaaS). We are particularly active in the latter. MaaS is about quickly compensating for disruptions in supply chains by switching to other producers or production capacities (see also topic page Manufacturing-as-a-Service). The Smart Factory Web, which we have been developing for years and integrated into Catena-X as an architectural blueprint, plays a central role.