The data-sharing network syncing up industrial supply chains

Posted: September 01, 2026

Like many industries, the automotive sector has a supply chain visibility problem. A vehicle contains thousands of components, sourced through multiple tiers of suppliers. More often than not, the carmaker at the top of the chain has little idea of what’s happening beyond their direct suppliers. 

That was, until a few years ago. In 2021, a group of automotive and technology companies, with the backing of the German automotive association VDA, created Catena-X: an industry-wide network designed to make it easier for companies to exchange data—from information about parts and materials to carbon footprints, quality and production capacity. 

The problem the network was trying to tackle is not just familiar to carmakers. Companies across industries increasingly need reliable information about where their materials come from, how much carbon was emitted in making them and whether suppliers have enough capacity to meet market shocks. 

“Global supply chain resilience has been proven over and over to be lacking, yet after each shock the industry kept reassuring itself that it cannot happen again,” Hanno Focken, Catena-X’s managing director for activation, governance and operations, told Our Industrial Life via email.

Limited cross-tier traceability can cost companies dearly. Focken pointed to the Takata airbag recall, a now notorious case that involved over 100 million inflators worldwide across more than 20 vehicle manufacturers—and which drove the Tier 1 supplier into bankruptcy. As Focken says, “companies that cannot see past their Tier 1 suppliers struggle to cope when a crisis hits.” 

But while Catena-X got its start in the automotive sector, its application doesn’t end there. Based on common standards and full information ownership, the network could be a model for other industries looking to work together without requiring everyone to hand their data to a single central platform. 

How Catena-X works: a network, not a giant database 

Catena-X is designed around a simple principle: companies should be able to share information with the partners that need it without giving up ownership or control of the underlying data. 

There is no central Catena-X database containing every participating company's supply-chain information. Instead, data moves between businesses that have agreed to exchange it, with verified digital identities for each company and common standards that allow different systems to communicate. Each company controls who can access its data, for what purpose and for how long. 

Traditionally, supply-chain data exchanges often rely on one-to-one connections between companies. This means suppliers repeatedly log into different portals and enter similar information in different formats. At the other extreme, a central platform can create a dependency on its owner. 

Catena-X’s standards are also open source. A company can connect using a standardized connector and then use certified applications for particular tasks. The aim is to make the connection reusable rather than creating a new integration for every customer or every use case. 

“Instead of re-uploading the same ISO 9001 certificate to portal after portal, for example, you upload it once and it is shared automatically with every relevant partner,” Focken explains. 

Tracing parts through the supply chain 

One of the clearest applications of Catena-X is traceability. A carmaker may know which Tier 1 supplier provided a component, but have less visibility of the materials and sub-components that went into it further down the chain. 

Growing regulation is making this issue more urgent. From February 2027, the EU Battery Regulation will require a battery passport for relevant electric-vehicle and plug-in-hybrid batteries entering the European market, including verified information on the battery's supply chain.  

Catena-X provides a way of gathering and exchanging that information across the companies involved. Its standard is designed to let upstream suppliers provide data that can be combined into a complete digital record, while keeping commercially sensitive information under the control of its owner. 

Compliance isn’t the only benefit. Better information across multiple tiers can help companies identify the source and scope of a quality problem much faster. Focken says quality issues have been detected, on average, four months earlier through cross-tier data exchange. In one case, a suspected camera fault was narrowed from 1.4 million potentially affected vehicles to just 14, with potential savings in the low single-digit millions of euros. 

Making carbon data travel faster 

The same infrastructure can be used to exchange sustainability information. 

Product carbon-footprint reporting has traditionally involved repeated requests, manual calculations and data passed between companies in different formats. Catena-X provides common rules and standards so that carbon-footprint data can be calculated, exchanged and reused across the supply chain. 

Focken cited one case that involved three companies at different levels of the automotive chain: Micron, a Tier 2 supplier; Flex, a Tier 1 supplier; and Ford, the original equipment manufacturer. Micron provided primary carbon-footprint data to Flex, which incorporated it into its own calculation before passing the information on to Ford. Each company used a different certified software application, but the Catena-X standards allowed the systems to exchange the information. 

“The value is not just faster access to data, it is access to data you can trust and compare,” says René Holschuh, senior manager for digitalization at BASF Performance Materials, a Catena-X member that provides everything from plastics and polyurethane to lubricants and battery materials to vehicle makers. 

Focken says Catena-X's experience so far suggests that the efficiency gains can be significant. Product carbon-footprint calculations can become three to five times more efficient than manual methods, with costs reduced by up to €10,000. Certificate management can also cut administrative effort by up to 95%. 

From visibility to coordination 

The network’s more ambitious applications go beyond reporting what has happened and help companies coordinate what happens next. 

Catena-X's supply-chain resilience work includes sharing information about demand and available production capacity. If a supplier can signal a potential capacity constraint early, customers can respond before it becomes a bottleneck—whether by adjusting production plans, changing orders or identifying alternative sources. 

“When the next disruption comes, companies in the network can find alternatives and act on real information rather than react blindly,” Focken says. 

The challenge, of course, is getting enough companies involved for the effects to become meaningful. Catena-X says more than half of the world's top 100 automotive suppliers—including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Volkswagen and Volvo—are now live in the network, with around 1,000 companies in its activation pipeline and participants in around 35 countries. 

The network has now set up hubs in different regions, including one in the U.S. run by the Automotive Industry Action Group. One of its applications there is compliance with California’s SB 253 regulations, which requires companies with revenues of $1 billion or more that operate in the state to report their greenhouse gas emissions.  

The network is also focusing on drawing smaller suppliers into the ecosystem. A €23 million Data Space Accelerator launched this year will support small and medium-sized companies across Europe, North America and parts of Asia with up to €30,000 for onboarding and implementing the system. 

How Catena-X is moving across borders—and industries 

In July 2026, the network announced another milestone: the first cross-border automotive data ecosystem linking Europe and China. The partnership is meant to open up secure data exchange between the two markets, starting with compliance requirements for the EU Battery Regulation. 

At the same time, the idea is moving to industries beyond automotive. In Germany, related data ecosystems are now being developed for chemicals, manufacturing, aerospace and semiconductors. Intriguingly, Focken says a company supplying several industries could potentially connect once and reuse that investment across different networks. 

In the meantime, Catena-X is still focused on getting more companies into its original ecosystem—especially more Tier 1 suppliers which, as Focken emphasizes, tend to bring their own suppliers with them. 

“As more OEMs write Catena-X participation into new supplier contracts,” he says, “this drives momentum forward and really helps to scale the network towards a critical mass.”