Not just in Wolfsburg
IT disruption paralyzes production at VW
September 27, 2023, 6:28 p.m
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At Volkswagen, production is suspended at the main plant in Wolfsburg, as well as in Emden, Osnabrück and Zwickau. The blame is on an IT malfunction that paralyzed the group’s central infrastructure. The cause is still unknown. According to the current status, an attack from outside is considered unlikely, it is said.
An IT malfunction has paralyzed the Volkswagen Group’s central infrastructure. Production in several plants is at a standstill, a company spokesman confirmed in the evening. “We can confirm an IT disruption of network components at the Wolfsburg location,” said the spokesman. The four vehicle producing plants in Germany are currently at a standstill – Wolfsburg, Emden, Zwickau and Osnabrück. The component plants in Kassel, Braunschweig and Salzgitter are also affected: “The disruption has existed since 12.30 p.m. and is currently being analyzed. There are implications for vehicle producing plants.”
The spokesman was initially unable to say anything about the impact abroad. At the moment it doesn’t look like an attack from outside, it was said in the evening. It is not yet possible to estimate when the problem will be resolved and production will start again. Accordingly, a crisis team was convened.
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.
Toyota had to close all of its factories just last March after its domestic supplier Kojima Industries suffered a system failure caused by a cyber attack. All 28 Toyota production lines in its 14 factories were also affected, affecting the production of around 13,000 vehicles. The group was also forced to temporarily halt part of its operations in July after a cyberattack on a computer system at the port of Nagoya, a Toyota hub, disrupted port services for two days.