Million data points are generated along the Automotive supply chain

Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in the Automotive industry, such as the BMW Group, have thousands of suppliers across the globe which all provide some parts of the car. One car consists of around 20.000 parts which are coming from supply chains with more than six parties involved. Imagine how much data is generated along this supply chain, which somehow needs to be collected! Not only that, today there are so many different interfaces to exchange these information around products, production sites and different use cases.
The solution for the challenge to exchange this massive amount of data was found a safe data ecosystem to share information in a standardized way, reducing integration efforts between the huge number of involved parties.

Catena-X: Harmonizing thousands of supplier interfaces to standardized data exchange and is used for business critical information

In order to grant transparency over the entire supply chain and to harmonize the different interfaces, sovity support the BMW Group in an efficient and fast onboarding of their suppliers to Catena-X. sovity and the BMW Group developed and executed scalable processes to enable an affordable onboarding.

Catena-X is a Data ecosystem from the automotive sector that was established in response to several critical developments and challenges in the automotive industry, including the complexity of value chains for companies. Catena-X provides a secure and standardized data sharing ecosystem to enable compliance with regulatory requirements as well as improve supply chain transparency and efficiency in the automotive industry. Participants across the value chain can benefit equally from the system, which facilitates data sharing in a transparent and compliant manner. Catena-X defines standard data models for specific use cases, all speaking the same language, which allows highly scalable processing of data and automated data exchange for various use cases. Integration efforts between different parties are thus reduced tremendously. The project is built upon existing frameworks such as GAIA-X, the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA), and the Eclipse Dataspace Components Connector (EDC Connector).The technical setup focuses on compliance, security, and interoperability.

sovity plays crucial role in onboarding journey

The implementation required more than just technology – it required trust. For many suppliers, Catena-X and the overall concept of a Data ecosystem was entirely new, having concerns about complexity and data security. sovity was selected to set up a pilot project, in which they served as a trusted advisor. sovity consults the suppliers about the functionalities and benefits of Catena-X, to take away the fear of this change as well as to deliver the necessary software.

The software sovity provides is the Eclipse Data Space Components Connector (EDC Connector), serving as the standardized interface, and the “ECU App”. ECU stands for Electronic Control Units that the suppliers deliver to the BMW Group. Via the app, suppliers provide data about ECU that are relevant for the production at BMW, while BMW can immediately send feedback.

“With the support of sovity, Catena-X is able to scale its network” says Anja Lang, Head of Catena-X at BMW Group. “The professional services and the fast, agile mindset of sovity are key drivers in successfully onboarding our suppliers.”

 

Sebastian Kleff, CEO and co-founder of sovity says: “The collaboration with BMW Group has shown, that the onboarding and usage of technology in Catena-X can happen in the shortest time while generating value for all involved parties. Now it is time to accelerate and connect as many parties as possible with many use cases. We are super proud to be a fundamental part of this.”

Catena-X-ready in record time

Within only one quarter, sovity was able to onboard more than 20 suppliers of the BMW Group to the Catena-X ecosystem. After a pilot phase, they can now easily and successfully exchange data with the BMW Group via the Catena-X standard interface the EDC Connector, revolutionizing the way data flows across the supply chain. By this, the suppliers are onboarded to Catena-X and established the foundation for data exchange with many other partners. They created one data interface for various use cases, showcasing the efficiency of the Catena-X standards. And this is just the beginning of scaling the data exchange in Catena-X: Catena-X has the goal to strongly grow in 2025 by onboarding more and more international partners and facilitating the data exchange from other use cases besides ECU, such as Demand and Capacity Management or tracing the CO₂ footprint.

Business critical data exchanged via Catena-X

The case of data exchange of ECU information is a huge step into the acceleration of Catena-X. Since January 2025, the suppliers exchange production-relevant data with the BMW Group via the Data ecosystem. The exchange of business critical and live data is the next level of maturity of the data ecosystem. Catena-X becomes more and more a crucial part of the Automotive industry and is going to be extended for further use cases between all OEMs and participants in the automotive industry.