Electric Vehicles are disrupting the industry – don’t let them disrupt your supply chain

Solution

A consultative approach to help navigate the new industry challenges

The automotive industry is facing the biggest challenge of its existence: OEMs and Tier 1s are learning they must adapt or die.

Part of that adaptation means leaning on trusted partners to help guide them through some of the challenges. In addition to providing the essential supply chain safety net with our proven critical delivery services, Evolution Time Critical offers a consultative approach, working with customers to build in emergency contingencies when suppliers and routes are first identified and mirroring the customer’s EV division’s entrepreneurial approach.

After another announcement, this time from the UK government banning the production of pure-ICE cars from 2030, the work we have been doing as an industry to integrate EV production into our supply chains will be critical to future success.

What is the challenge?

• Electric vehicle production faces the same challenges as conventional vehicle production, but with the added complication of a new pool of suppliers.
• Some of these suppliers are new businesses themselves
• There are regulated parts and dangerous goods
• There can be extreme fluctuations in demand
• We have seen a lot more pressure on suppliers who – five years ago – may have been supplying two or three OEMs, and in relatively low volumes, but are now finding that number increasing dramatically.
• We are also finding that new technology means new suppliers, new businesses to get to know and new supply routes. This is challenging the systems and processes that the industry has had in place for years.

Evolution Time Critical and Electric Vehicles

An increasing amount of our work at Evolution Time Critical is now with EV manufacturers and suppliers.

• We have been working to build contingencies at a very early stage with many of our long-term customers on their electrification journey, as well as niche EV manufacturers.
• One of the main challenges we have consistently found is the unpredictable spikes in demand for EVs.
• The overall figures may be relatively low, but the spikes are significant, and causing headaches across the board at OEM and supplier level.

Spikes in demand are nothing new, whether that is due to vehicle launches, run-outs or supplier issues causing stress in the supply chain, solving these issues and keeping production going is Evolution Time Critical’s core strength.