Riese & Müller: supply chain transparency with VERSO

The challenge at Riese & Müller

Riese & Müller is one of the leading premium manufacturers of e-bikes. A key element of its sustainability strategy is building more transparent supply chains. “We firmly believe that transparency is the foundation for trustworthy and responsible collaboration within a global supply chain,” says Managing Director Dr. Sandra Wolf with conviction.

Transparency also enables companies to meet regulatory requirements such as the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act and the upcoming EU Sustainability Due Diligence Directive – even though Riese & Müller is not currently subject to the German law due to its number of employees.

“Once we defined supply chain transparency as our goal, we started creating massive Excel spreadsheets and developing evaluation criteria. That quickly became very complex and confusing. Since many of the criteria involve political, economic, and human rights aspects that are far beyond our area of expertise, it became clear that we needed a tool to support us,” explains Managing Director Dr. Sandra Wolf.

The solution

At the start of the collaboration, supply chain transparency was still a relatively new topic in the bicycle industry. As a first step, a pilot project was launched to assess, in particular, the willingness of suppliers to provide the required information.

The three-month pilot involved 16 suppliers already accounting for a large share of the company’s procurement volume. All selected suppliers registered on the VERSO Supply Chain Hub and completed the Maturity Assessment.

The Maturity Assessment enables suppliers to provide information via self-assessment with minimal effort and automatically generates a Maturity Score, which is visible to both the suppliers and their customers.

Even during the pilot phase, important initial insights were gained into suppliers’ sustainability processes and potential risks.

Thanks to the rapid implementation of the pilot and the positive feedback from suppliers, the groundwork was laid for a long-term partnership to achieve comprehensive supply chain transparency.

“The platform, its visualization features, and the processes convinced us right away,” says Hannah Müßener, Sustainability Manager at Riese & Müller.

Following the pilot, the rollout was extended to the entire supplier base. Over 70 direct suppliers were invited to join the platform, covering more than 90 % of Riese & Müller’s procurement volume. An additional 60 suppliers from deeper tiers in the supply chain have also registered on the platform.

The result

As part of its risk management activities, Riese & Müller used the VERSO Supply Chain Hub to identify three critical raw materials – aluminum, copper, and cobalt – for which it aims to achieve deep-tier transparency.

To this end, a supply chain mapping was carried out for components and frames containing significant amounts of these high-risk materials. This approach is still relatively new and, due to its complexity, requires smart technology. Within just six months, transparency was achieved down to the second and third tiers of the supply chain.

The analytics capabilities of the VERSO Supply Chain Hub provided a comprehensive overview of the geographic distribution and structure of the supply chain, including potential risks – laying the foundation for targeted actions.

After more than a year of collaboration between VERSO and Riese & Müller, the conclusion is overwhelmingly positive. The set goals – to prepare for regulatory requirements and enable a comprehensive risk analysis – have been successfully achieved.

With the Maturity Assessment, the supplier base can now be continuously developed. Improvements in supply chain sustainability performance are automatically made transparent. The supply chain mapping also enables an in-depth analysis of critical raw materials.

“The VERSO Supply Chain Hub helps us continuously expand transparency in our supply chain and support our suppliers in developing their sustainability performance,” says Alexander Eilhauer, Head of Purchasing and Supply Chain Management at Riese & Müller.

At the same time, the VERSO Supply Chain Hub supports fast and straightforward CSR reporting through its comprehensive data. As a result, the first progress could already be documented in the 2020/2021 sustainability report.

Following the initiative’s launch, other players from the bicycle industry have joined, including Fazua, a manufacturer of e-bike drive systems.