Brose Suppliers Day: Awards For The Best

During a global suppliers' day, which was attended by around 270 representatives from the most important suppliers of raw materials, series material, investment goods and services, from Europe and beyond, the Brose Group honoured the most efficient supply partners for the year 2008.

The TOP Suppliers of the Year in 2008 were Kühne + Vogel Sondermaschinen GmbH (Roth/Nürnberg), Rieger GmbH & Co., KG (Villingen/Schwenningen), and A-JIN INDUSTRIAL Co., Ltd. (Kyung San-City/Korea).

The rising performance standards in the automotive industry, together with the price trends on the international raw materials and energy markets, pose major challenges to companies and their suppliers.

The aim is to achieve profitable growth together with an excellent supplier base. "The prize "Supplier of the Year" is both an accolade and an incentive", says Horst Jürgens, responsible for global purchasing by the Brose Group. "Each of the three companies honoured has embraced our standards in a particular way", continues Jürgens.

At this event, Klaus Deller (Executive Vice President Development/Purchasing) left no doubt that the challenges arising in 2009 from the global crisis in the automobile industry will dwarf anything heretofore experienced, and set out the requirements that Brose will be expecting from its supply partners: high technological competence, global support in development and production, zero defects in quality, and commercial performance: "All that must culminate in an increase in our competitiveness and a further improvement in our cost structures", says Deller.

As CEO of the Brose Group, Jürgen Otto, stressed at the event, close cooperation characterized by openness and trust, and involvement at an early stage in new customer projects, is the only effective way to achieve success in joint and ongoing development. This is the path that Brose firmly intends to go.

"By intensifying the exchange of information and by learning from one another, we can devise optimum solutions even more quickly and up the pace – we call that Dynamic and Systematic. That's why we put our faith in imaginative, innovative and self-confident supply partners". Particularly given the currently difficult conditions in the global economy, innovation management and cost management in procurement is of paramount importance.

The acquisition of Continental's electric motors operations has opened up new market opportunities for the supply partners of the Brose Group too: "As an important part of the process, our partners have the opportunity to profit enduringly from this additional growth potential", says Brose's head of Purchasing, Horst Jürgens.

The procurement turnover of the Brose Group will reach about 1.8 billion euros in 2008; 70% of that will be for production material. In this year alone, the company invested some 250 million euros in keeping and expanding its technological lead in mechatronic systems and motors for vehicle bodies and interiors.