auto-gration: Assisting SMEs to participate in global digital supply chains in the automotive sector

Currently, any company wishing to do eBusiness with others in the automotive supply chain must have a compatible communication system. If not, then the company has to either purchase a new system, hire an external message-conversion service, or resort to manual (e.g. fax) information exchange, all of which add cost and often create an insurmountable barrier for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

To tackle the problem, the European Commission, supported by major organisations of the automotive industry, has created the auto-gration (automotive integration) project which aims to improve the integration of automotive companies, particularly SMEs, in the sector’s digital supply chains. To this end the project developed the auto-gration Architecture that facilitates the exchange of eBusiness messages over existing, but currently incompatible, systems thereby allowing large companies to keep their current infrastructure investments whilst greatly simplifying and extending eBusiness communications for their smaller business partners.