Steering automotive supply chains to success
We talked to Stephan Smit, Director Strategic Automotive Accounts EMEA at Avnet Electronics Marketing, to find out how Avnet works with automotive customers to keep their production lines running smoothly.
Stephan began his career as a technology marketer, before moving on to various roles, including sales engineer and corporate accounts manager at Avnet Electronics Marketing.
Interview: Stephan Smit, Director Strategic Automotive Accounts EMEA at Avnet Electronics Marketing
As director of strategic automotive accounts for the EMEA region, he is responsible for the strategic Tier One automotive customers and their supplier partners/manufacturers that sell directly to car makers.
Avnet takes the categorisation a stage further, defining strategic Tier One automotive customers as those who provide core technologies, such as engine control units, to the car makers. Smit, in his role serving these suppliers, has deep insights into the evolving needs of car makers and how the supply chains that service them must adapt to support them.
“Car makers see themselves as at the centre of a triangle, with original component manufacturers at one point, the Tier One automotive customers at a second, and distributors such as Avnet, which help the other two match supply and demand, at the third.”
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Fulfilling that role means that Avnet has to understand and react to a host of rapidly evolving trends in the car industry.
Macroeconomic trends
The global nature of the car industry is nothing new, but it does mean that local supply chains can be disrupted by geopolitical events half a world away.
Smit highlights a number of recent trends that are having an impact here in Europe. For example, China has a strong appetite for European luxury brands, which is good news for manufacturers such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Trade tensions between the US and China, however, are affecting these vendors because they make many of their luxury models for the Chinese market in the US.
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