An IT malfunction affected the central infrastructure of the company on Wednesday Volkswagen-Group paralyzed. Since midday at 12:30 p.m. there have been network component failures with significant consequences for production. The cause is currently unknown. A crisis team is working hard to find a solution to the problem.
The disruption probably had an impact on production in several plants worldwide. “There are implications for vehicle producing plants,” said an official statement from Volkswagen to the “Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung
“. Production in all four German plants – Wolfsburg as well as Osnabrück, Zwickau and Emden – is at a standstill. The component plants in Kassel, Braunschweig and Salzgitter were also affected, it was said. Nothing was working in the offices at the Wolfsburg headquarters either. Among other things Mail traffic in the company and the Autostadt were also affected by the server problems. At other locations, the “Handelsblatt
“The emergency call apparently failed.
The subsidiary Audi is also affected by the disruption, as an Audi spokesman confirmed in the evening. The extent of the problems is still being investigated. It is unclear whether Porsche AG, in which Volkswagen still holds a 75 percent stake, is also affected.
“We have a huge problem”
According to an IT service provider responsible for the company’s networks, this is a global disruption. “The production lines have stopped everywhere since this afternoon – all over the world. Audi and VW are affected,” she told the dpa news agency on Wednesday evening. “We have a huge problem.”
It is not possible to say exactly how long the disruption will last. The IT specialist at VW and Audi’s external network service provider assumes that the disruption will keep IT busy at least until Thursday. One cannot say how this came about. Anything from a breakdown to a hacker attack is possible.
The company itself had previously declared an external hacker attack to be unlikely based on current knowledge. “According to the current state of analysis, an external attack is unlikely to be the cause of the system malfunction,” Volkswagen said earlier in the evening.
The IT disruption comes at an inopportune time for the Wolfsburg team. Volkswagen is currently struggling with a whole series of problems. The VW brand is now considered a case of restructuring. The electric models do not reach the target figures and production is stalling anyway. Short-time work had already been ordered in Emden. In order to make the unit sustainable, brand boss Thomas Schäfer (53) should improve earnings by ten billion euros by 2026. Now there is Trouble about plants and personnel
.
There is also the threat of new trouble on the legal front. Investigators from the public prosecutor’s office were already there on Tuesday Raid because works council salaries may be too high arrived at the Wolfsburg plant. They searched offices and four private homes.
Memories of Toyota
The case is currently bringing back memories of the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota. It was the end of August VW rival hit by total failure. At that time, technical problems led to a complete loss of production in all Japanese plants 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.