Top Suppliers Honored: Continental Presents its “Supplier of the Year 2014” Awards

• Every year, the automotive supplier’s Automotive Group offers these awards in recognition of outstanding performances among its over 900 strategic suppliers
• 15 award winners – Continental Executive Board Chairman Dr. Elmar Degenhart presented the awards at the International Purchasing Managers’ Meeting in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf, July 9, 2015. Since 2008 now, every year the Continental Automotive Group has been honoring its outstanding suppliers with “Supplier of the Year” awards. Today these endorsements are respected throughout the industry as a clear indication of the quality and capabilities of a company, which is hardly surprising, given the rigorous selection criteria and the tough competition for the awards. The winners are selected following the comprehensive, systematic appraisal of the approximately 900 strategic suppliers of the Continental Automotive Group. The “Suppliers of the Year 2014” were recently announced and honored at a two-day International Purchasing Managers’ Meeting in Düsseldorf, which provided a forum for 160 of Continental’s purchasing managers from around the world to discuss purchasing strategies. The awards were presented by Dr. Elmar Degenhart, Chairman of the Executive Board of Continental AG, and Günter Fella, Head of Purchasing at Continental Automotive.

“Continental has a clearly defined goal: We aim to become the leading technology company in the automotive supplier industry, with a view to safeguarding and strengthening our company’s long-term profitable growth,” said Degenhart. Key elements of this strategy, he explained, were state-of-the-art project and quality management methods, maximum robustness in the products brought to market and the development of pioneering solutions in many different areas – from further reductions in carbon dioxide emissions to automated driving. “We can only reach this goal through close and trusting collaborations with our top-class suppliers,” Degenhart concluded, “and the recipients of our ‘Supplier of the Year’ award set the standards in this respect.”

Every year, based on a list of predefined criteria, the suppliers are assessed in five areas: quality, technology, logistics, costs and company conditions. This year, the awards were presented in six categories: Electronics; Electromechanics; Mechanics & Raw Material; Plastics & Rubber; Investment & Engineering Services and a division-specific category – the Continental Automotive Group is made up of three divisions: Chassis & Safety, Powertrain and Interior. For the last five years, along with these regular award categories, there has also been a special “Quality Award” to honor exceptional performance in terms of quality improvement and at the same time underline Continental’s high expectations when it comes to quality. The “Quality Award 2014” went to the Truly company, which supplies Continental with Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD).

“Supplier of the Year 2014” awards in the Electronics category were presented to NCC (Capacitors), Rohm (Discretes & Standard ICs) and NXP (Power Devices), while the winners in the Electromechanics category were LG Innotek (Connectivity) and Schweizer (Standard PCBs). In the Mechanics & Raw Material category Csaba (Casting) and Erdrich Umformtechnik (Stamped Parts) were honored, and in the Plastics & Rubber category the awards went to MI Technologies (Plastic Components) and Heraeus (Product-related Auxiliaries). The awards for Investment & Engineering Services had been handed over to Alten (Engineering Services) and Fuji (Automatic Insertion Machine). The three companies that received awards for outstanding performance in supplying division-specific categories were, for Chassis & Safety, Nisshinbo (Aluminum Extrusion and Precision Machining), for Interior, Boe-La (Dials) and, for Powertrain, Erkert (Injectors, Forgings, Treatments).

Last year the Continental Automotive Group purchased raw materials, components, and services from its more than 4,000 suppliers to the value of approximately €12.2 billion.