Enabling Digital Transformation for Automotive Suppliers with Next Gen PLM
Tier One and Two automotive suppliers operate in one of the most challenging and competitive business environments in industry today. Yet, strategies to replace legacy solutions or pursue digital transformation seem abstract and disruptive. vdR's automotive supplier solution provides a clear path forward. Give your sales, engineering, product development, and production teams the tools and agility they need to keep up with shorter lifecycles and increasing complexity.
Creating a Foundation for Success
vdR's Automotive Supplier Solution is supported by a PLM-based foundation that addresses three critical pieces of digital transformation: data cohesion, process repeatability, and platform connectivity. Once in place, this three-part foundation can fuel the innovation and efficiencies needed in this hypercompetitive market.
The race to reinvent how complex products are made is here. Is your company equipped with the right tools and strategies?
Operational Benefits
- boost data reuse
- improve process repeatability and flexibility
- drive visibility across product lifecycles from as-quoted to as-produced
- ensure responsiveness to change
Reduce Risks to Profitability
- improve quote accuracy
- ensure as-quoted profit margins are maintained throughout a program
- lower the cost of compliance
- minimize scrap, rework, and warranties
Featured Capabilities

Sales & Quoting Enablement
Quoting represents the "headwaters" of product information and customer requirements. Improving quotation efficiency and promoting sales data reuse is a critical first step to digital transformation. The automotive supplier solution equips sales teams with the tools to effectively collaborate with internal stakeholders and the customer while collecting and managing as-quoted data.
Benefits
- Maintain as quoted profit margins
- Improve RFQ response time and costs
- Reduce redundant data entry and searching
- Improve data security
- Streamline collaboration
- Promote data reuse and lessons learned
Features
- Quote revision change management
- Compare as-quoted, planned, and actual
- Real-time financial forecasting and costing
- Secure cross functional collaboration tools
- Integration into ERP/MRP
- Manage and configure quoting workflows

BOM & Configuration Management
Providing a common and integrated source of BOM information and tools across your organization is critical. Whether you need basic BOM management, or more advanced features, vdR Automotive Supplier Solution can provides BOM management tools to ensure accurate product definitions for all stakeholders.
Benefits
- Reduce risk with digital validation of product configurations in context
- Reduce errors through automated data synchronization across product views and downstream BOMs
Features
- Integrate cross-discipline design authoring tools directly or via legacy PLM/PDM/ALM
- Redlining, impact analysis, and visualization
- Connect and support critical processes such as requirements, project management, etc.

APQP Based Program Management

Compliance & Sustainability

Software & Connectivity
Whether managing new product introduction (NPI) or a change to a released product, ensuring change- related risk is managed successfully is critical. Traditional product quality planning facilitated collaboration between engineering activities, but next generation quality planning goes beyond engineering and manages cross functional activities including design, procurement, manufacturing, and sales, among others.
Benefits
- Ensure product specifications cascade from concept to customer
- Faster product development cycles
- Leverage lessons learned to reduce risk
Features
- Integrated tools for FMEA, MSA, SPC & PPAPs
- Workflow and Task Assignment Automation
- Product quality planning integrated into the program timeline
Forward looking automotive suppliers recognize the importance of compliance and sustainability. vdR Automotive Supplier Solution provides integrated tools to cost-effectively manage the requirements for REACH, RoHS, Conflict Minerals, IPC-1752A, and similar regulatory directives.
Benefits
- Reduce errors and rework costs
- Minimize risk of significant fines, restricted market access, and damage to brand
- Stay compliant with easy reporting and analysis of the product material information
Features
- Automate substance declarations to suppliers
- BOM check identifies substances of concern used in product structures
- Manage materials in the context of customer defined and managed catalogs
Software and connected parts are driving new opportunities for automotive suppliers but managing software development complexity is a big challenge. The vdR Automotive Supplier Solutions integrates AML and PLM allowing software to be managed as part of the BOM. This approach dramatically improves requirement and change management to accelerate development, improve quality, and reduce corrective actions.
Benefits
- Improve cross-discipline visibility of change
- Streamline validation of software and product requirements
- Accelerate development by managing and sharing data across domains and products
Features
- Integrated product amd software requirements management
- Integrated product and software change
- Manage hardware and software dependencies
Solution Capabilities
- Application Lifecycle Management (ALM)
- Bill of Materials Management
- Configuration Management
- Change Management
- ECAD/MCAD Integration
- ERP Integration
- Engineering Change Management
- Compliance
- New Product Introduction
- Outsourced Manufacturing
- PDM Integration
- Product Cost Management
- Product Data Management
- Project Management
- Quoting Management
- Requirements Management
- System Driven Product Development
- Systems Engineering
- Supply Chain Management
- Supplier Corrective Action
- Technical Publishing