Jaguar Land Rover worked with its interiors supplier Grupo Antolin to prevent disruption on the production line and win twice at this year's CIPS Supply Management Awards
Jaguar Land Rover and Grupo Antolin won Best supplier relationship management and Overall winner at the 2017 awards
Six hours. That’s how much notice supplier Grupo Antolin – one of the largest players in the car interiors market internationally – gets to assemble and ship instrument panels and consoles for the Jaguar F-Pace, Jaguar XE and Jaguar XF, for luxury car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover. It’s a complex task, given the parts are usually bespoke to each customer. And the stakes are high, as any issues with delivery can disrupt JLR’s overall vehicle production, impacting on customers and revenues.
In early 2016, Grupo Antolin moved production to a different site in order to accommodate increased demand. As if moving wasn’t enough of a challenge, the supplier was also grappling with the demands of launching the new instrument panel and control assembly for the Jaguar F-Pace, made up of around 400 parts, and was having to ship to multiple locations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this triple whammy of challenges began to have a negative effect on performance, with output issues, quality issues and equipment breakdowns. In the first quarter of 2016, JLR spent around £1.8m in overtime to produce vehicles at weekends, due to issues in the supply chain.