Watch: BMW's Dr Ulrich Wieland on building flexible and resilient automotive supply chains
Dr Ulrich Wieland, vice president production control, logistics, material control at BMW, discusses strategies for resilience, the benefits of localisation and how open communication with suppliers can improve operations.
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Resilience, collaboration and localisation are all topics at the forefront of today's automotive logistics sector. Speaking on the Red Sofa at Automotive Logistics and Supply Chain Global, Dr Ulrich Wieland, vice president production control, logistics, material control at BMW, discusses how the company is addressing these three key areas.
Seven core principles for supply chain resilience
Wieland outlined his view that to achieve agility and resilience in the supply chain, there are seven crucial variables that must be managed: product viability and technological openness; localisation; scenario planning; operational excellence; data transparency; data-informed decision-making; and communication and collaboration.
"It's always good to be highly localised in the main markets," he shared. " Of course, this is due to scale effect not everywhere, but in terms of robustness, having a local production and supply chain in main markets is a huge success factor."
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"It is a fundamental mistake to optimise on a certain premise and a certain point," Wieland said on the topic of scenario planning. "It's extremely important early on when designing a production and supply chain to really think about completely different premises than you have original in your planning and to check how robust the system is on these occasions."
He described operational excellence as "the basis for everything" and data transparency as "absolutely crucial" when optimising a supply chain for resiliency, while noting how vital data security and cybersecurity can be today – something the recent JLR cyber incident has made abundantly clear to OEMs.
Speaking on the importance of making decisions based on data insights, Wieland emphasised the need to not overreact or "react based on simple gut feeling" during volatile times – instead making use of this valuable data to inform actions.
Communication and collaboration, the final and – according to Wieland – perhaps the most important success factor, is crucial, he said. "Without having the right culture and strong collaboration with all of the process partners in the supply chain, this will not work," he concluded.
Enhanced scenario planning
Drilling into BMW's approach to scenario planning in more detail, Wieland outlined the value of data and new tools coming into the market to optimise forecasting and forward planning. "You need to really closely collaborate with strategy departments and also controlling departments in order to implement a decision process which truly reflects scenarios," he added.
Local-for-local supply chains
From an OEM perspective, Wieland shared his belief that localisation is important to consider from the early stages of the process – during the product development phase. "You can really only influence the supply chain if you also influence the product," he elaborated. "So beginning in the early phase of the development of a product, you really need to be involved; you need to bring the right information to the table."
Inbound logistics priorities
Wieland also touched on how the findings of Automotive Logistics' recently published "Automotive Inbound Logistics Survey 2025" chime with his experiences at BMW's plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina and shared BMW's priorities when it comes to inbound logistics. "I must say within the study there are many findings which are 100% fit for for our challenges; for Spartanberg, however, there are a couple of additional ones: we're just now getting prepared for the next generation of vehicles," he said. "Spartanberg is getting prepared also to be electrified, to build battery electric vehicles, therefore we are also preparing an assembly hall which um uh will in the future produce uh battery electric vehicles at the same time as as ICE vehicles."
