In response to Brexit’s seismic impact on UK-EU trade relations, LEAR Corporation’s UK manufacturing facilities faced unprecedented customs compliance challenges. As a major automotive systems supplier operating across European borders, LEAR UK needed to rapidly transform its customs processes to maintain seamless operations in the post-Brexit environment. This case study details how Vivansa’s expertise helped LEAR UK develop and implement a digital customs compliance strategy that not only addressed immediate Brexit-related requirements but also established a blueprint for global deployment. The transformation leveraged Vivansa’s Customs Compliance Control Tower (CCCT) Research & Development work to transform LEAR UK’s approach to customs management, ensuring business continuity while setting new standards for customs compliance excellence in the automotive sector.
Context and Challenges
Like many companies in the automotive supply chain, LEAR Corporation had historically managed Customs compliance through decentralised processes and manual operations. However, the evolving global trade landscape has introduced significant new considerations:
- Regulatory Developments impacting business operations, including Brexit, NAFTA changes, new Free Trade Agreements, and international trade tensions with China, Iran and Russia.
- Market Evolution as competitors invest in advanced compliance technologies to meet growing customer expectations.
- Economic Factors including compliance-related costs in a challenging automotive market environment.
Recognising these developments, LEAR has proactively established a strategic vision for Customs compliance, aiming to transform it into a competitive advantage that enhances Customer Satisfaction & Trust, Business Continuity, Corporate Reputation, and Operational Profitability.
Preliminary analysis – Digital transformation of Customs Compliance Processes (Ref. 28909).
Client: Lear Corporation UK
Date started: May, 2019
Date completed: June, 2020
Type of services activated:
- Global trade management strategy
- Customs consulting services
- Automation of customs processes
- Post-Brexit transition
See our portfolio of services.
Resources allocated:
About 3 FTEs, essentially with analyst, architect, modeller, and business expert profiles.
Vivansa Mission
Vivansa was engaged to develop and implement a comprehensive customs compliance transformation strategy for LEAR Corporation. Beginning with a strategic pilot at LEAR’s UK manufacturing facilities – chosen due to urgent Brexit-related requirements – Vivansa designed a scalable solution framework to address both immediate UK needs and future global deployment.
The solution architecture was conceived as a global platform, recognizing that customs compliance challenges transcend regional boundaries and require standardized approaches across LEAR’s international operations. Phase 1 encompassed a thorough Preliminary Analysis at LEAR UK, comprising:
- Gap analysis of current compliance processes
- Cost/benefit evaluation
- Enterprise solution architecture design
- Phased implementation roadmap
This foundational work established the blueprint for LEAR’s global customs compliance transformation initiative.
Outcomes
Through this transformative initiative, LEAR Corporation UK has significantly evolved its approach to customs compliance through comprehensive digitalisation. The cornerstone of this transformation is the innovative Customs Compliance Control Tower (CCCT)*, an advanced orchestration platform that represents a paradigm shift in how automotive manufacturers approach regulatory compliance.
The CCCT seamlessly integrates the entire customs compliance value chain, from initial supplier assessment through to final reporting and analytics. This next-generation solution enables real-time visibility and control over critical compliance processes including supplier qualification, product origin determination, pre-filing validation, declaration management, and post-filing surveillance. By centralizing these traditionally fragmented operations into a unified control center, LEAR has established unprecedented oversight of its compliance landscape.
What sets this solution apart is its sophisticated orchestration capabilities. The CCCT acts as an intelligent middleware layer, harmonizing data from disparate enterprise systems into actionable intelligence. This architectural approach empowers compliance practitioners with contextualized insights and automated workflow management, fundamentally transforming how teams interact with compliance-related information and execute their daily responsibilities.
* The implementation has been the catalyst for the development of Vivansa’s market-leading Viictor Control Tower platform (formerly known as ‘Qomply’), recognized for its innovative approach to customs compliance automation and orchestration.
Lear Corporation, a US-headquartered company, is a global automotive technology leader in Seating and E-Systems, which enables superior in-vehicle experiences for consumers around the world. Lear’s diverse team of talented employees in 38 countries is driven by a commitment to innovation, operational excellence, and sustainability. Lear is Making every drive better™ by providing the technology for safer, smarter, and more comfortable journeys. In 2019, it ranked #147 and in 2018, it ranked #148 on the Fortune 500 list. Revenue: 20,47 billion EUR (2017) – Subsidiaries: AccuMED Corp., MORE.