Accelerate Innovation for Your Automotive Supply Chain

Automate business processes and reduce costs

The electronic data exchange (EDI) has been established globally for many years to support programmatic communication between business partners. Instead of sending a large number of unstructured paper documents by fax or email, companies can achieve substantial time and cost savings using automatic transmission in accordance with industry-specific standards.

Do you want to switch the business processes in your company to EDI? Should new business partners be connected via EDI? With the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite, you get a professional tool for fast and reliable B2B integration resulting in the following advantages:

• Well-established solution with preconfigured processes
• Standardized adapters to all common ERP systems worldwide
• Fast online integration of new partners using our extensive mapping library
• Ease of use and end-to-end monitoring for each department of your company
• High degree of standardization resulting in low operating costs
• Secure replacement of legacy B2B systems with minimum effort through the use our enhanced migration tools
• Comprehensive self-service portal for your partners to connect, yielding lower support costs

Do you already have a B2B/EDI system that currently handles your business processes via ISDN? Through the terminating of ISDN, automotive manufacturers and suppliers are forced to switch to OFTP2. SEEBURGER will help make your OFTP2 transition a success - from the discussion phase with partners through to operations – with the appropriate tools and services.

Web-based EDI solution integrates suppliers without their own EDI or ERP system

In the case of small suppliers, there are often no system requirements for standardized B2B/EDI communication. However, the manual maintenance and administration of partner relationships requires a significant amount of time and increases process costs.

In order to achieve the highest degree of automation with all business partners, SEEBURGER offers a web-based EDI solution that enables automotive companies to manage and automate business transactions. Even small suppliers without their own ERP system can be connected electronically.

The advantages:

• Full integration of suppliers that have no EDI functionality available
• Integration covers all typical transactions around shipping, invoices, delivery schedules and credit notes as well as Kanban and VMI processes
• Simple and error-free EDI data exchange instead of fax and email delivery
• No manual data collection, uniform documents from all suppliers

Holistic engineering (CAD/CAx) and product data exchange

The sharing of engineering and product data with partners and service providers in a global company, with production sites distributed around the world, is no longer limited to solely CAD data, but also covers a wide variety of product defining information from numerous authoring and data management systems such as CAD, CAM, CAE, PDM, and PLM.

With the SEEBURGER Engineering Solution for engineering (CAD/CAx) and product data exchange with suppliers and customers you can benefit from the innovative components for data exchange with ENGDAT, website, OFTP2 and CAD/PDM Integration:

• Integrated, scalable complete solution for secure CAD/CAx data exchange with OEM and engineering partners worldwide
• Connection and integration of systems such as CAD data exchange process, PDM, CAD converters or CAD test and validation
• Support for relevant industry standards, protocols and networks such as ENGDAT, OFTP2 or ENX
• 100% integration of partners through direct connection or via web portal for partners without their own ENGDAT/OFTP system
• Client software used on desktops is easy to use and thus the overall handling is not only secure, but also simple

This ensures safe product and know-how protection for your design data exchange beyond company limits and country borders.

Real-Time Integration of Systems and Cloud Applications

As a manufacturer in the automotive or supporting industries, you benefit from the seamless integration of external and internal systems in real time. With e-commerce, you can expand your market, whether it is an automotive aftermarket marketplace or your own web site. Also, when choosing a CRM solution many companies today go for a cloud solution, such as Salesforce.

If you want to set up a future-oriented and scalable business, make sure that all systems and components involved are seamlessly integrated. With the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite, you can check and control all data flows in a safe and smart way. 

A central platform ensures the exchange of business-critical data, guarantees your certification for customer audits and creates internal added value.

Ensure compliance in data exchange
The IT security audits of major automotive suppliers includes checking to see if their direct suppliers adhere to compliance guidelines. Make sure you have secure and traceable data exchange for your business-critical data with complete visibility (end-to-end monitoring) and control.

SEEBURGER BIS Managed File Transfer (MFT) Solution

The SEEBURGER MFT solution for the automotive industry provides secure and efficient data exchange, for example:

• Transparency and effortless delivery of large or sensitive data sets
• Replace old and unsafe (S)FTP structures
• Secure partner access for development, design and easy monitoring, ensuring compliance with your automotive business partners.

With the BIS MFT solution implemented, you reduce business risks, improve performance in business processes – all in a single cost-effective solution.

Order and delivery process management for the automotive industry including JIT/JIS

With the "Logistic Solution Professional" (LSP), SEEBURGER offers a solution for suppliers, customers and logistics service providers who need to provide special order and delivery processes to the automotive supply industry.

This solution is particularly effective for automotive suppliers that:

• Manage intensive JIT/JIS delivery concepts which are critical to local factories
• The automotive business is not the core business, but must support these special processes
• Are smaller companies or do not want to run a special automotive ERP system

The solution includes both electronic data exchange with business partners as well as easy-to-configure process flows based on partner profiles for all types of delivery scheduling procedures, including JIT/JIS.

SEEBURGER LSP can be used as a central system for complete delivery scheduling in conjunction with the host systems or as a decentralized solution in respective plants. Very specific requirements, such as PUS, AMES-T, BeloM, NLK and String of Pearls, are also covered. In addition, LSP can also be used as a JIT/JIS box.

If needed, additional features can be added to the solution, including:

• Financial modules for creating invoices and data communication, credit receipt and balance
• Warehouse management for shipping depots and container accounts
• Inventory and spare parts warehouse control

The logistics solutions are available either on premise or as a cloud service.
SEEBURGER provides a service to implement the complete supplier integration.

SEEBURGER Smart-eInvoice®: Electronic Invoice Processing

Since 2011, electronic invoices including qualified electronic signatures are just as valid as their paper counterparts, so more and more companies have adopted e-invoicing.

Benefits from digital invoicing include: The electronic processing and the automation of accounting processes saves 60 - 80% of the costs of paper-based processing. In addition, E-Invoicing ensures faster, media-free processes, reduces error rate and allows for greater transparency and traceability.

With SEEBURGER Smart-eInvoice® you can implement your specific e-invoicing solution quickly and easily, and take advantage of the following features:

• Digital interface to XML and PDF/A3 for incoming and outgoing invoices
• All major formats can be processed: PDF (ZUGFeRD), EDI (VDA 4938), paper, etc.
• Automatic invoice processing
• Legally compliant archiving
• SAP-certified
• Managed service and in the cloud

"The SEEBURGER Console provides users full transparency in relation to the IDocs to be processed, as well as monitoring of throughput times and notifications to mobile devices for example."

[Customer quote]

Many EDI/B2B processes are time-critical for automotive suppliers. This is particularly true for the ASN process. Here OEMs usually allow a timeframe of only up to 30 minutes. Incorrect or late EDI messages may lead to penalties, decreased supplier rating or even delisting.

This is usually the result of a responsible business unit being informed too late or not being informed at all of issues with ASN, inhibiting an adequate response. It can also happen if incoming JIT messages are stuck or missing and the responsible business unit has no visibility into what is going on.

The solution:

Quickly and easily, track and process your documents in SAP using the flexible tools of the SEEBURGER Console. The components of the solution enable users to:

• Monitor all incoming and outgoing documents (B2B) directly in SAP
• Immediately trigger alerts to your department in case of an issue
• React quickly to missing messages with configurable, target monitoring
• Quickly and easily fix all errors and EDI conversions with the correction functionality
• Prioritize documents and control them in an user-friendly interface

SEEBURGER Cloud Services: Flexible, Transparent and Secure

SEEBURGER provides automotive suppliers with comprehensive solutions for the digital transformation of business processes. But you need a competent team and specific infrastructure to provide these solutions as part of your in-house operations. That is why all SEEBURGER automotive solutions are available as a Cloud Service too.

With the SEEBURGER Cloud Services you can quickly and easily implement new requirements.

SEEBURGER Cloud Services provide:

• Operational solutions in SEEBURGER data centers across Germany, China and the USA. We will comply with specific location preferences.
• Services are ISO-27001 certified
• Disaster Recovery Setup
• Optional Private Cloud system environments
• Connecting business partners (Onboarding Service)
• Supporting all EDI formats and communication protocols
• Monitoring and incident management of all B2B processes
• Real-time monitoring with web interface access
• End-to-End-Monitoring for the SEEBURGER Console in SAP
• Transparent monthly reporting of all KPIs