Major auto suppliers turn to AI to navigate supply-chain woes

A geopolitical dispute over microchips, ever-fluctuating changes to US trade policy, and a shortage of rare earth minerals are just a few challenges that have bedeviled major automotive suppliers lately.

In response to *waves hands* all of this, suppliers are changing up their traditional ways of doing business—and turning to tech for help.

Top executives from Lear, the largest US-based automotive supplier, and the North American division of German multinational company Bosch recently spoke at Automotive Press Association events near Detroit about how they’re navigating supply-chain crises, adapting to tariffs, and integrating AI.

“I’m all for an ambitious goal to build more here in the US and supply great jobs,” Lear CEO Ray Scott said. “But if you think about the supply chain that’s been built over 25 years, trying to do that overnight, it’s very challenging.”

Supply-chain changes: Amid myriad complications around getting supplies from China, some automakers are looking to reduce or eliminate their exposure to the country—a complex undertaking given its automotive supply-chain dominance across many minerals and components.

Reuters recently reported, for example, that GM is instructing its suppliers to move their supply chains out of China. Per The Wall Street Journal, Tesla is trying to eliminate Chinese parts from its US-made cars.

Scott pointed to the Covid-19 pandemic and said that a shift to less globalized, more regionalized sourcing has been underway for years. Lear attempts to give its customers as much flexibility as possible, from providing design alternatives for many components to letting customers decide where products are manufactured.

“I think we’re, without question, more flexible, more agile in a lot of respects. I still think we have more to go, more to learn,” he said. “But I do see the onshoring, the regional approach, the ability to have alternative sources really helping with suppliers.”

Paul Thomas, president of Bosch in North America and of Bosch Mobility in the Americas, said that the supplier’s focus is on “resiliency.”

“Resiliency is a combination of multiple things,” he said. “First of all, you have to look at the governmental environment that we’re in, what the tariffs mean for you and [the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement]. I’m a strong believer that Bosch has built our United States business based upon a strong USMCA position, and we want to see that be consistent and come to some level of consistency so we can continue to make decisions about investments and where we manufacture our products.”

AI assist: Both Scott and Thomas pointed to AI as a tool that’s helped their teams navigate supply-chain issues, as well as in countless other areas ranging from design and engineering to purchasing to accounting to manufacturing.

Lear has a tech partnership with AI provider Palantir that includes 14,000 Lear employees training on and using Palantir’s Foundry platform. Such tools, Scott said, can make employees more productive by freeing them up from tasks like sorting through data. In a news release announcing a five-year extension of Lear and Palantir’s agreement, the companies said the supplier is using AI tools to “proactively manage its tariff exposure,” among other uses.

“It’s daunting. It can be intimidating. It’s not about taking jobs,” Scott said. “It’s about making somebody’s job more efficient and better.”

Bosch, Thomas said, has had its employees training on AI for years, and now is putting it to use in the real world—both in its products and its workflows.

“With the growth that we’re seeing, the goal is to try to maintain the level of associates we have today while growing our revenue,” he said. “The goal isn’t to try to use AI to eliminate roles, but to use it to expand our revenue.”