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Why Private Equity Loves the Automotive Aftermarket
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By APF
Brake rotors may be replaced for a variety of reasons. One is that replacement is a must if the original rotors are worn out. Every rotor has a minimum thickness or discard specification cast or stamped somewhere on the center hat section of the rotor. When the brake pads are replaced, the rotors always should be measured with a micrometer to determine their thickness. If the rotors are worn too thin and are at or below the minimum or discard thickness (or they cannot be resurfaced without exceeding the limit), the rotors must be replaced.
Worn-out rotors are dangerous for two reasons: Thin rotors cannot absorb and dissipate heat as well as new rotors, which increases the risk of the pads getting too hot and fading with prolonged or heavy braking. Also, thin rotors are more likely to crack and break apart, which would cause brake failure.
Another condition that usually calls for rotor replacement is when the rotors are “warped” and are causing a vibration or pulsation when the brakes are applied. Warped is actually a misnomer, because the rotors are not distorted but are worn unevenly. When there is more than a couple thousandths variation in rotor thickness, it pushes the pads in and out when the brakes are applied. The force is transmitted back through the caliper pistons, brake lines and master cylinder all the way to the brake pedal, creating a vibration or pulsation that can be felt by the driver. The greater the variation in rotor thickness, the stronger the vibration or pulsation. It’s a really annoying condition, though not necessarily an unsafe one. It may be mistaken by the vehicle owner for a problem with their antilock brake system, which also can produce pedal pulsation or vibrations when the ABS system kicks into play.
Uneven rotor wear and thickness variations can be caused by severe rotor overheating (a dragging brake pad or stuck caliper), by distortion in the rotor caused by uneven torque or over-tightening the lug nuts, or even metallurgical defects in the rotor casting itself. High spots on the rotor will often be discolored with a dark bluish tint. Resurfacing the rotor can restore flat parallel surfaces, but often the hard spots that are caused by overheating or uneven wear extend into the metal surface. Over time, this will cause uneven wear again and the pedal pulsation or vibration to return. Replacing the rotors with new ones eliminates any such worries.
Rotors also must be replaced if they are cracked, damaged or severely corroded. The danger is rotor failure due to the cracks or severe corrosion. Some minor heat cracking on the surface may be acceptable, but heavy or deep cracking is not.
Another reason to replace rotors is to upgrade braking performance and/or the appearance of the vehicle. Drilled or slotted rotors do add a performance look to any brake system, and they also can provide improved cooling for the rotors and venting for the pads. The holes and/or slots provide an escape path for hot gases that can form between the pads and rotor when the brakes are working hard. Holes and slots or wavy grooves in the rotor face also create turbulence, which improves airflow and cooling.
Some vehicles come factory-equipped with “composite” rotors that have a thin stamped steel center hat section mated with a cast rotor body to save weight. This type of rotor tends to be more sensitive to uneven wear and distortion than one-piece cast rotors. Composite rotors also are more costly to replace, so one-piece aftermarket cast rotors are a replacement option. However, if replacing composite rotors with one-piece castings, both rotors (right and left) should be replaced at the same time to maintain even braking and alignment side-to-side. On some vehicles, replacing a composite rotor with a thicker cast rotor also may alter wheel geometry slightly, creating increased toe-out and tire wear when turning.
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By Counterman
NTN, the parent company of BCA Bearings and Bower Bearings, announced that it received a 2023 Automotive Communications Award from Women in Auto Care.
NTN received the award in the “Business-to-Business – Promotional Goods, Gear, Marketing Collateral” category for its BCA and Bower “Summer Cruisin’” promotions.
“We are honored to be recognized by an inspiring organization like the Women in Auto Care”, said Georgianne Dickey, director of marketing. “Our BCA and Bower summer promotions are always popular with our customers, and winning an Automotive Communications Award puts an exclamation point on our 2023 promotions as we are hard at work planning for 2024.”
The BCA and Bower summer promotions reward participating distributor customers in the automotive and heavy-duty aftermarket segments with BCA- and Bower-branded promotional goods, which they can then use to conduct their own local promotions.
“This strategy increases brand awareness at every level of the distribution channel, from the distributor to the technician, while enabling our distributors to localize the incentives and customize their promotions to their loyal customer bases,” NTN said in a news release.
The theme for the 2023 BCA and Bower summer promotions was “Summer Cruisin’”, and the promo-item packages contained items used for popular summer car care activities. Items such as carwash kits, microfiber towels, car dusters and tailgate carry-alls keep cars clean and organized, while coolers, director’s chairs and umbrellas keep refreshments and people cool in the shade, allowing recipients to go for a summer cruise in comfort and style.
The 2023 Women in Auto Care Automotive Communication Awards were presented at the annual Women in Auto Care Awards Presentation, during AAPEX in Las Vegas. The awards recognize aftermarket manufacturers, distribution networks and other organizations for outstanding business-to-consumer and business-to-business advertising, marketing and public relations activities.
Women in Auto Care is a community of the Auto Care Association, the co-owner of AAPEX, a trade-only event for the automotive aftermarket.
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By Counterman
In the almost 100 years of the Genuine Parts Company (GPC), parent company NAPA and Motion, it has had five CEOs. You can literally count them on one hand. With that brings “an incredibly consistent, powerful and longstanding culture” of being a solutions-oriented business for customers, said Will Stengel, president and COO of GPC. But, when COVID-19 hit, GPC was forced to rethink its usual strategies for getting the right part to the right customer at the right time. As a result, it underwent a technological revolution.
“I think it’s fair to say any company that’s had success over decades needs to continuously challenge itself to improve,” Stengel told attendees at the MEMA Aftermarket Technology Conference in October. “What COVID did for GPC is prove that we could improve our business model, which we’ve done.”
It started with hiring the right people. In 2021, GPC hired Naveen Krishna as its EVP and CIDO — the first technologist to run GPC’s IT department. Then, Susan Starnes, a former Lowe’s executive, became the company’s first vice president of emerging markets to help create innovative strategies for our business. The next step was to take GPC’s solutions-oriented approach to solving customer problems and apply technology to it.
“All the fundamental elements of our business have a dedicated technology strategy behind it,” Stengel explained during the conference, held at GPC’s headquarters in Atlanta. “That lines up with this whole idea that tech is at the core of what we do and what we want to do.”
GPC is one example of an aftermarket company that is no longer thinking of itself as strictly in the automotive and industrial space. Instead, its focus has shifted to become a technology company in the automotive aftermarket. If you ask Paul McCarthy, president and CEO of MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers, he thinks all companies should adopt that mindset.
“Technology is driving our success, efficiency and our future. This is the reality for the aftermarket,” he said. “I’m issuing a call to action: a demand for innovation in our industry from suppliers.”
Amid the discussion around technology trends, a common theme that surrounded innovation and efficiency was what we’re calling the buzzword of 2023: artificial intelligence. Like many industries, the automotive aftermarket is delving into AI and ways it can help businesses be more productive and effective as future mobility continues to inch closer to needing aftermarket solutions.
AI Applications in the Aftermarket
Picture this: You know when and where a repair is going to happen and can get the part that technician needs to the shop before the vehicle comes in for service. That is just one example of how AI can make our industry more efficient.
But what exactly is AI?
Tilak Kasturi, founder and CEO of Predii, a company that develops automotive-specific AI applications, said AI is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines on certain business intelligence (BI), such as data, content, reports, etc. It utilizes machine learning, neural networks and natural language processing to do things such as recognize patterns, make decisions and judge like a human.
“BI is aggregated data and analytics, such as market intelligence, sales forecasting, etc.,” he explained. “If you say ‘right time, right part, right place,’ that is BI, but ‘right part, right place, ahead of time’ is AI. Knowing beforehand requires some prediction ability.”
David Brondstetter, a 40-year aftermarket veteran and CEO of SureCritic, an AI software that responds to customer reviews for repair shops, added that AI is applying algorithms to a data set to understand what is going to happen in the future. A good example is parts ordering.
“If you’re able to predict that, let’s say an O2 sensor is nearing end of life, you can predictably set an appointment for that customer at the shop, get the part ordered, and then have the customer come in,” he said. “The problem with parts ordering right now is you rely on all these things to happen, and then you assume your customer’s going to
come in.”
Scott Brown, industry ambassador and co-founder of the Diagnostic Network, a digital resource and forum for technicians, said an example of how his company has used AI is in the form of AiDN, an AI-powered assistant. Brown said AiDN will detect a vehicle-specific discussion in a Diagnostic Network forum and will respond like a member of Scott’s team.
“If you think about the deliverable and who it’s being delivered to, it can take an apprentice technician or middle-educated technician and get him started on the right pathway,” Brown said. “We will mature this technology and continue to train it on expert information. We think it will streamline [a technician’s] process of getting to a successful result faster in the future.”
A Long Road Ahead
While companies like Predii, SureCritic, Diagnostic Network and others are implementing AI for various solutions, industry experts say more work needs to be done. For example, access to good industry data, and education around the types of AI to use are critical. Data security and protecting your IP is another issue.
Kaivan Karimi, global partner of strategy and cybersecurity at Microsoft, presented the concept of “responsible AI” at the Technology Conference as a guideline for businesses when experimenting with this technology.
“There is the wild, wild West AI and then there is responsible, curated AI,” he said, adding that responsible AI is setting standards and guardrails around how you’ll use the tool while making sure your data is secure. “AI is a great productivity, tool, but people need to expect a set of standards when using it.”
Knowing the correct AI tools to use comes down to working companies that specialize in industry data. For example, ChatGPT is not meant for industry specific data, said Predii’s Kasturi.” It can actually take you to the wrong path,” he said.
When speaking about data and predicting when a part will fail, Right to Repair is at the heart of the aftermarket’s data access troubles. Vehicle telematics data is crucial for building out technology to predict when parts need replaced and the right way for a technician to fix a vehicle.
“We know what the world looks like when there is real repair access,” McCarthy said. “Take the Phillips Connect trailer. Just with your brakes, it can tell you their performance, wear and exactly how much life is left in key components so that you can do the repair before something breaks. But this concept and this positive future is only possible with Right to Repair.”
Cybersecurity is another big issue playing a part in using AI. Microsoft’s Karimi said securing your company’s data in each step can decrease data breaches and cybersecurity attacks.
“You need to protect the factories, the lines, the cars, the enterprise, the network, the backends, the cloud, and then some security operation center at a center that ties the whole thing together,” he said. “Your strengths are only as good as the weakest link.”
McCarthy added that if a Right to Repair law is passed, and safe, open connectivity is achieved, it can expand technology and services and improve forecasting and inventory for all involved along the supply chain. GPC’s Stengel added that for aftermarket companies, any technology—such as AI—must prove to make the industry companies more profitable, in addition to efficient.
“We talk about data, we talk about digital, we talk about the role in which technology serves and improves the customer experience, but, ultimately, it’s got to drive a financial expression for the business, which is growth and operating profitability,” Stengel said.
Industry Jobs of the Future
With an exciting future in technology ahead, aftermarket companies may be forced to rethink roles at their companies. The question on many minds is “Will AI take my job?” The answer might surprise you, Karimi said.
“When I give talks to engineers, and they ask, ‘Am I going to lose my engineering job?’ I say, You may lose your engineering job to another engineer who knows AI. You have to adopt AI as a tool. It’s a massive productivity gain. It’s around to stay.”
As the use of data and AI applications increase, SureCritic’s Brondstetter thinks that data scientists are going to become more prominent in aftermarket organizations.
“Before this rise of generative AI, most of the data scientists were working on normalizing data,” he said. “Now that we’re in a state where we’ve got computing power to handle all this data, these predictive algorithms can normalize the data and data scientists can work on tweaking the model. That’s where you get a real generative AI. I think that position will become more prominent because the core of AI is having data scientists who understand that.”
Predii’s Kasturi said in his experience, automotive data analysts and experienced technicians are critical to ensuring AI’s future in the aftermarket. Skilled technicians, for example, can verify the results of generative AI models.
“I see that as the future where technicians are hands-on, ratchet-and-wrench-type people, but also are powering some of these expert-based systems,” Kasturi said. “They know their data really well. They know their codes, they know their parts, they know the fix.” Brown agreed, adding that an aging or injured technician can now turn into a triage specialist that takes the AI and vehicle information, and then prepares a repair path plan and assigns it to the other technicians in the shop. “This new generation can hopefully rebirth our service industry,” he added.
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By Counterman
MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers recently recognized Dana Incorporated with its Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Award.
The association presented the DEI Award to Dana at AAPEX in Las Vegas.
“We are honored to accept this prestigious award and thank MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers for recognizing Dana’s efforts in creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment,” said Vanesa Badillo, Dana’s senior manager, talent development, who accepted the award on behalf of Dana. “At Dana, we continuously build upon our diverse strengths. Dana’s DEI strategy aims to cultivate a strong and inclusive culture where all our people have opportunities to thrive and reach their full potential.”
To be considered for the MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers DEI award, a company must contribute to and operate in the automotive and commercial-vehicle aftermarket; have an existing internal DEI strategy and objectives in place that support the core values of DEI; have made an achievement either internally or externally to advance DEI in the aftermarket; and must be an established company of good repute and sound financial condition.
“At Dana, we are proud to have leaders who challenge the status quo and address barriers to inclusion by reviewing and adjusting various employee and business policies and processes, such as publishing a supplier diversity policy,” Badillo added. “Dana focuses on accountability for inclusive behaviors at all levels of the organization. This leading phase of Dana’s DEI journey has made clear governance guidelines that establish DEI objectives and address barriers to inclusion through employee management processes.”
The MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers DEI award recognizes the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in the automotive aftermarket and celebrates those individuals and organizations who champion the spirit of DEI in their organizations and communities.
MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers created the DEI Awards in 2021. Each year at AAPEX, MEMA Aftermarket Suppliers recognizes one individual from a member company and one member company who embody and advance the core values of diversity, equity and inclusion.
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