A disruption with an unknown cause and global effects: VW had to contend with a comprehensive production outage that night. The all-clear came in the morning.
After a serious IT disruption that almost completely paralyzed production at VW, the company is restarting its plants. “The IT infrastructure problems in the Volkswagen network were resolved during the night and the network is working stably again,” said a spokesman on Thursday morning. “The affected applications are currently being restarted. The global production network is starting up and production should take place as planned.”
A network error almost completely paralyzed the company from Wednesday. Production in almost all plants came to a standstill from the afternoon onwards, including all German locations of the Volkswagen core brand in Wolfsburg, Zwickau, Emden, Hanover, Osnabrück and Dresden. The component plants in Braunschweig, Salzgitter, Kassel and Chemnitz were also affected. Audi also reported problems.
It wasn’t until the morning shift on Thursday that the first plants were started up again, including Wolfsburg and Zwickau. More are expected to follow throughout the day. “We have been running in series again since 10 a.m.,” said a spokesman for “VW Commercial Vehicles” in Hanover. “Production in Dresden should start regularly at midday,” explained a spokesman for VW Saxony.
At Porsche, where production was also suspended, the production lines in Stuttgart had already started up again at 11 p.m., a spokesman explained. The Leipzig plant then followed at 2:45 a.m.
IT service provider: Worldwide disruption
According to an IT service provider responsible for the company’s networks, it was a global disruption. There were also problems in VW car dealerships. A corresponding report from the “Handelsblatt” was confirmed by the dpa in dealer circles. According to the report, the US plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was also affected. According to a spokesman, there were no effects at Skoda in the Czech Republic.
A crisis team set up by VW worked all night to solve the problem. VW is not yet providing any further information about the cause. However, there are still no signs that the disruption was caused by external influences, said a spokesman. Don’t assume a hacker attack.
Wissing: “Digital infrastructures are critical infrastructures”
In view of the disruption at VW, Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) called for greater sensitivity to the issue of network security. “We need security systems here that work,” he told broadcasters RTL and ntv. If disruptions like those at VW occur, they must be analyzed precisely. “It must be clear to everyone that digital infrastructures are critical infrastructures.”
At the end of August, VW’s rival Toyota was affected by a total failure. At the Japanese car giant, technical problems led to a complete loss of production in Japan for about a day. An error in the parts order management system was to blame. It was later said that the cause was insufficient storage space on servers. It was emphasized that the incident was not a cyber attack.
Source: Stern
