Instant Supplier Risk Screening for Your Automotive Supply Chain

Trade legislation like the UFLPA or China’s lithium technology restrictions can present substantial risk to automotive supply chains. The average car has around 30,000 parts, each with its own set of inputs. Multiplied across the number of models for a given manufacturer, there’s a high likelihood that many major car brands are at high risk for compliance issues.

In order to reduce these risks, companies must gain a deeper understanding of where their parts are coming from: who their suppliers are and who their suppliers’ suppliers are.

“Car companies are under a tremendous amount of political and economic pressure to break into the EV market, but three-quarters of the world’s lithium-ion batteries are made in China,” says Richard Mojica, Lead at Miller & Chevalier, a law firm specializing in the automotive industry and trade law. “Deeper supply chain visibility is paramount to automakers’ survival in this climate.”

Importers face substantial barriers to effective supply chain visibility. Direct suppliers can resist requests for information, and what information they do provide must be verified. But even those fortunate enough to have cooperative direct suppliers struggle for insight into sub-tier sources further up their chain.

Additionally, seemingly low-risk inputs can turn out to have possible ties to forced labor through transhipment or corporate ownership. Automotive companies, therefore, need insight not just into their direct suppliers’ owners and subsidiaries, but also their suppliers’ trading partners.

Forced labor is a global problem that requires cooperation from many stakeholders on every level to effectively combat. It is recommended that car companies begin by conducting their own supply chain mapping in order to screen their networks for possible risks. Many in the industry point to a lack of supply chain visibility as their primary roadblock, but purpose-built technology can help.

By layering corporate ownership data with import-export information from 70+ reporting countries, Sayari makes it easy for auto supply chain teams to validate intelligence gathered from direct suppliers, build targeted multi-tier supply chain maps, and screen for hidden risk.

With integrated government watchlists and data sourced directly from Sheffield Hallam reports, Sayari allows importers to automatically scan supplier lists for 100+ risk factors, 20+ of which are focused specifically on Xinjiang forced labor.

“Sayari brings an unparalleled level of supply chain visibility and risk insights to automakers struggling with their forced labor risk screening by helping them proactively identify and monitor for risks,” explains a spokesperson from Joyson Safety Systems, a global leader in mobility safety providing safety-critical components, systems and technology to automotive and non-automotive markets. “This type of advanced screening protects their supply chains and ensures regulatory compliance in these evolving times.”