American carmaker General Motors recognised its most innovative partners during a virtual ceremony to celebrate its 28th annual Supplier of the Year awards on June 24, 2020. The recipients of the Supplier of the Year award included 116 suppliers from 15 countries, with 13 first-time winners, as well as eight companies who earned GM’s Innovation and Overdrive Awards.

Among the companies that won the prestigious award is Sundram Fasteners, part of the 21-company TVS Group of Companies and one of India's largest automotive component suppliers.

The carmaker says its Supplier of the Year award is reserved for suppliers that distinguish themselves by going above and beyond GM’s requirements, providing customers with the most innovative technologies and highest quality in the automotive industry.

The ceremony was originally scheduled as a live event to be held in March, but was postponed due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The recognition is for supplier performance in the 2019 calendar year. Five of the award-winning suppliers were minority-owned enterprises.

It is interesting to note, that GM was the first automotive OEM to establish a supplier diversity program in 1968. Based on the last eight years, GM has averaged $3.6 billion (Rs 26,644 crore) in Tier 1 spend with minority suppliers.

Shilpan Amin, VP - Global Purchasing and Supply Chain, GM said: “Our suppliers play a key role in delivering the products, services and experiences our customers deserve – and these award-winning suppliers went above and beyond our expectations. We also believe it’s important at this point in time to thank our entire supply base for their efforts the last few months to mitigate the impacts of Covid-19. Not only have we been able to safely restart our manufacturing operations, our suppliers played a key role in assisting our initiatives to increase the supply of ventilators and personal protective equipment for frontline healthcare workers to help save lives and keep communities safe.”

Innovation Awards
LG Display / LG Electronics, Magna Seating, Shape Corp and Strattec Security won Innovation Awards for delivering cutting-edge technologies that substantially enhance vehicle capabilities and/or the customer experience.

LG Display / LG Electronics was recognised for its P-OLED technology on the 2021 Cadillac Escalade, which marked the first-ever use of a curved OLED display in a production vehicle. The three curved screens make up the instrument panel cluster for displaying basic vehicle-related information and an integrated centre stack that serves as an infotainment display for audio, video and navigation content.

Magna Seating distinguished itself by envisioning the car seat of the future with its Freeform seat design. This provides rear-seat passengers with a sculpted, wrinkle-free design and increased comfort and knee room.

Shape Corp. was honoured for engineering and manufacturing the automotive industry’s first curved, multi-hollow pultruded carbon fibre bumper beam for the 2020 Corvette Stingray. The bumper’s properties provide a lightweight design needed to help the Corvette meet its weight requirements.

Strattec Security Corporation differentiated itself with its new Invis-A-Rise power tailgate technology on the Chevrolet Silverado pickup. This feature allows users to automatically open, close and latch the vehicle’s tailgate with the push of a button.

Overdrive Awards
GM also honoured four companies — BASF, FreightVerify, Linamar and Morley — with its Overdrive Award. The award, first given in 2012, recognises supply partners for extraordinary leadership in cultural change and commitment initiatives that drive exceptional business results for GM.

The Supplier of the Year, Overdrive and Innovation award winners were chosen by a global team of GM purchasing, engineering, quality, manufacturing and logistics executives. Winners were selected based on performance criteria in Product Purchasing, Global Purchasing and Manufacturing Services, Customer Care and Aftersales, and Logistics.

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