How IBM is Helping Toyota Reimagine Supply Chain Visibility
The automotive industry is navigating one of its most turbulent periods in recent history. A decade of disruption — from parts shortages and geopolitical instability to escalating tariff regimes — has exposed fragility and inefficiency across global supply chains.
It is against this backdrop that forward-thinking manufacturers are turning to strategic partnerships, data and technology to future-proof their operations.
One such partner is IBM, a global technology and consulting firm.
Clay Sheriff, Senior Partner at IBM, leads the Toyota account for IBM Consulting.
Clay has been working with Toyota over the past five years, helping the automotive manufacturer to transform its supply chain in North America.
Toyota’s North American supply chain systems have supported the business remarkably well for decades,” Clay explains. But the level of volatility over the past five to 10 years has changed what the business needs from data, visibility and decision-making.
We have been working with Toyota to reimagine how supply and demand data come together, so Toyota can improve visibility, forecasting and demand sensing to ultimately get the right vehicle to the right customer at the right time
What to do when ‘exceptions’ become the norm?
No business today is immune to disruption. So what do you do when ‘exceptions’ become the norm? Clay explains that to tackle this challenge at Toyota, IBM has helped unlock data that supports real-time decision-making, enabling Toyota to better serve dealers and end customers.
“This transformation has been underway for several years at Toyota, and we’re using new AI capabilities to accelerate decision-making on top of a stronger data foundation, helping teams respond more quickly to supply chain changes. Our role is to help Toyota build capabilities it can operate and continuously improve,” says Clay.
Working across Toyota’s ecosystem of technology partners, IBM is helping integrate cloud, data and AI capabilities into practical supply chain workflows — connecting supply, demand, logistics and dealer-facing visibility in ways that support faster, better decisions.
“For us, it’s stitching together the technology components to deliver outcomes for the business,” says Clay.
He adds: “Making sure we’re collaborating and integrating across Toyota partners to deliver that outcome for the business, so that there’s a better experience for the end customers, dealers and employees.”
Together, we have helped give Toyota much better visibility into data across the supply chain. It was historically difficult to understand the timing of when a vehicle would land at a dealer because of the many handoffs through logistics”.
A visibility platform, effectively a control tower, now shows where vehicles are in the process, from manufacturing through delivery to the end customer. When supply disruptions hit the market, those ETAs become extremely important for dealers and customers.”
A partnership built on co-creation
Looking to the future of IBM and its journey with Toyota, Clay reflects that “the partnership with Toyota has been fantastic. For us, this is about co-creating with Toyota. We’re working with the digital innovations team and the supply chain business to deliver business outcomes.”
“The opportunity now is to take the lessons from this programme — the data foundation, the operating model and the co-creation approach — and apply them across other areas of the business where better visibility and faster decision-making can create value.”
