From air filters to zebra livery vinyl, our Purchase department stocks every area at Hyundai Motorsport with the things we need to keep our crews and customers moving around the world.
Each person has a dedicated area and is a specialist on the parts, materials, tools and consumables required by our different departments. That could be engine, suspension, steering, brakes, electronics, composite, body shop, machine shop and more. A technical background is essential to ensure each part of the job is carried out correctly.
Like a well-oiled production line, the team monitors each part of the process. Everything is tracked using powerful software with an approval workflow. Since running a WRC team and growing customer business can understandably become costly, using tiered approvals for procurement helps us track our spending.
Department requests include detail of what they want, how much they need and by what date, as well as budget allocation. These are all tracked internally and the experienced Purchasers identify the best price and supplier to fulfil the order.
Once orders are ensured to be provided with the deadline, the Workshop Stores in Alzenau receive them directly. If necessary, they are then first checked by Quality Control. This is recorded in the system, signaling to other areas of administration, such as Finance, that everything has been delivered as expected and the full order cycle is complete. These balances and controls guarantee everything runs smoothly throughout the organisation.
When it comes to developing new parts for the cars, in co-ordination departments such as Engine Design, the skillful team dedicates time to looking at the designs in order to select a fitting supplier in line with the specifications required. Not every supplier can comply with the narrow tolerances needed in critical parts to power our rally-winning Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC. Blueprints with practical classifications for each section show very challenging or high demand pieces requiring specialist providers.
Each team member develops a good working relationship with their suppliers. Occasionally an urgent turnaround is required, and our trusted technical partners can make exceptions in their production timeline to get items to us quickly. With our multinational headquarters and suppliers throughout the world, our team are also working in multiple languages.
Outside factors can restrict our ability to order new parts and materials. A European summer or Christmas shut down can push lead times from less than two weeks to up to six weeks. Given tight WRC schedules and our increasing Customer Racing activities, our Purchase team colleagues undertake very careful planning and consideration so delays are kept to an absolute minimum.
