“Economic-chain costing requires information sharing across companies, and even within the same company, people tend to resist information sharing” — Peter F. Drucker*

Catena-X addresses a longstanding industrial challenge: high-value supply-chain use cases require data from multiple companies, yet firms are reluctant to surrender proprietary data to a central platform. Its decentralized dataspace foundation enables peer-to-peer transactions while each party retains control over access to and use of its data, removing a critical barrier to cross-company collaboration. Drucker anticipated both the economic-chain logic and its information hurdle: “economic-chain costing requires information sharing across companies, and even within the same company, people tend to resist information sharing” (Drucker 1995, p. 58). Catena-X combines this largely industry-agnostic exchange foundation with automotive-specific data models and applications for supply-chain use cases.

From R&D consortium to operating ecosystem
The €250 million, 28-partner Catena-X Consortium (2021–2024), including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Bosch, ZF, SAP, and Deutsche Telekom, served as the R&D incubator: it developed automotive supply-chain use cases and the open-source software foundation now maintained as Eclipse Tractus-X. After the consortium ended, responsibilities separated: the Catena-X Automotive Network e.V. or Catena-X Association governs the automotive ecosystem, standards, and certification; Eclipse Foundation Tractus-X maintains the open-source reference implementation; and operating companies, beginning with Cofinity-X, enable production participation (Eclipse Tractus-X, 2026). My involvement spanned the build phase from the initial 15-page government proposal through the 1,700-page consortium contract and delivery. I represented Deutsche Telekom on the 3-person agile SAFe-based Product Management team responsible for overall software release that became the Tractus-X reference implementation. After the consortium, my role shifted to international expansion.
     -> See our CEO 2-pager: Catena-X overview and user manual

How Catena-X is powered by Eclipse Tractus-X: The 3-layer software stack
The distinction between Catena-X Assoc. (CX, homepage) and Tractus-X (homepage, release changelogs) is clearest in the software architecture. Starting from the business use case, the stack separates three hierarchical layers of capabilities required for automation: top-level applications that execute the use case; beneath them, the corresponding data products and models that define the information each application requires; and at the base, the data network that provides and exchanges the actual data across organizations (Guggenberger et al. 2025; Schlueter Langdon & Schweichhart 2022; Otto 2022, 2019):
     (1) Dataspace network: The largely industry-agnostic foundation for decentralized peer-to-peer transactions, covering participant identity, discovery, contract negotiation, access and usage controls, and sovereign data exchange. The foundation created in the consortium incorporates Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC, homepage), the Dataspace Protocol, and the Gaia-X trust framework (Gaia-X 2026). The Dataspace Protocol, originally developed by IDSA and now maintained by the Eclipse Dataspace Working Group as DSP v1.0.0, specifies interoperable interactions between participants. It is progressing through ISO/IEC PAS transposition under JTC 1/SC 38. In parallel, ISO/IEC 20151, developed within the same committee, defines the higher-level concepts and essential characteristics of a data space rather than the technical exchange protocol (Castellvi 2026).
     (2) Data products and models: Domain-specific semantics that turn raw data into standardized, reusable assets and digital twins (Schlueter Langdon & Sikora 2020). In CX, these models describe data for cross-company automotive supply-chain processes.
     (3) Applications and use cases: domain-specific business logic using those data products for tasks such as Product Carbon Footprint (PCF), quality, traceability, and demand & capacity management (DCM).
CX is therefore the automotive data ecosystem powered by the Eclipse Tractus-X reference implementation. Its lower dataspace-network layer is largely reusable across industries, while the upper two layers encode automotive-specific supply-chain semantics and applications. The entire stack itself runs on cloud or on-premises infrastructure and standard Internet communication networks.
     -> See our three-layer architecture overview: Data 0: README

Use case 1: Sustainability and Product Carbon Footprint (PCF)
Technology matters only when it creates value in use. As Drucker put it, “what the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or service does for him” (Drucker 1974, p. 61). Therefore CX from the start focused on industry pain points such as sustainability and quality. Sustainability and CO₂ reduction are priorities across industries, with automotive facing particular pressure to decarbonize complex global value chains. A cornerstone is the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF): measuring emissions at product level and, critically, Scope 3 emissions across suppliers and multiple tiers. McKinsey highlights data transparency and value-chain tracking as prerequisites for identifying and reducing these emissions (Clauwaert et al. 2023). CX enables trusted primary PCF data to be shared across companies and tiers. Our case study follows Ford, Flex, T-Systems, and IBM building and expanding a real-world multi-tier PCF data chain from pilot toward production. Ford later named Flex a 2025 Sustainability Supplier of the Year, explicitly highlighting the CX-based PCF pilot (Flex 2025).
     -> Read the detailed case study: Auto 6: Sustainability with Catena-X – Case study

Use case 2: Quality
Quality failures can propagate across company boundaries and create substantial network-wide costs. In 2021, GM recalled roughly 142,000 Chevrolet Bolts and recorded about $2 billion in recall charges after manufacturing defects were identified in LG-supplied battery modules; LG later agreed to reimburse GM approximately $1.9 billion (Colias 2021). CX addresses this coordination challenge through two complementary data flows:
• Root-cause analysis upstream: OEM field and telematics data can flow to suppliers and be combined with supplier production data using standardized CX Quality models under CX-0123 standard. At the AIAG Quality Summit 2025 in Detroit, a Ford-Flex pilot demonstrated Ford providing telematics data through the Cofinity-X-operated CX ecosystem to analyze a Flex-supplied part.
• Blocking notifications downstream: Suppliers can notify customers and OEMs when parts must be blocked because of defects or compliance issues. Under CX traceability standard CX-0125, structured notifications can move through dataspace connectors so affected partners can halt production, isolate parts, and reduce rework or recalls.
Together, these flows take cost out of the entire system and reduce time-to-containment and time-to-root-cause across tiers by replacing bespoke bilateral exchange with governed, interoperable network participation.
     -> Read about on-stage demo: Detroit’s triple 2025: AIAG-Quality, Sust, CX Onboarding

International expansion: North America
Automotive is one of the world’s largest industries by revenue, employment, and innovation, and its supply chains span global and market-specific vehicle platforms. A data ecosystem serving it therefore needs global reach. North America was a natural priority as one of the largest automotive markets, home to major OEMs and deeply integrated cross-border supply chains. After the consortium, I was appointed to the CX Internationalization Committee as Ecosystem Development Manager for the U.S., alongside the VP Strategy & Marketing of Flex Automotive, to support regional expansion and establishment of a Catena-X Hub, ultimately sponsored by the Automotive Industry Action Group. AIAG is a not-for-profit association representing more than 4,000 companies, including Ford, General Motors, and Toyota Motor North America.
     -> Read about: Data ecosystems globalization flywheel – North American example (link)
2023
• Pre-launch Austin, TX: Introduced Catena-X, Manufacturing-X, IDSA, and Gaia-X as components of a unified technology stack and began coalition building with U.S. champions including Ford Motor Company and Flex (Schlueter Langdon 2023a)
• Smart Manufacturing Greenville, SC: Founding of International Manufacturing-X (IMX), reinforcing U.S. ties including CESMII (Schlueter Langdon 2023b, 2023c)
2024
• CES Las Vegas, NV: World premiere of the Ford-Flex primary Scope 3 Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) data chain using CX technology in a T-Systems CX Sandbox (Schlueter Langdon 2024a): IBM-2min-vid
• Hannover Messe: Murata added to the Ford-Flex PCF chain, demonstrating multi-tier capability of the CX ecosystem and Tractus-X stack (Schlueter Langdon 2024c)
• AIAG-IMDS Detroit, MI: AIAG announced the Catena-X Hub for North America; an on-stage migration of the Ford-Flex PCF data chain from the T-Systems CX Sandbox into Cofinity-X production environment (Schlueter Langdon 2024e)
2025
• CES Las Vegas, NV: AIAG CEO attended a presentation by Chris Langdon as CX Ecosystem Development Manager at the IAV booth for launch of world’s first Tractus-X enterprise dataspace (Schlueter Langdon 2025a; TSI online, DCL report, LinkedIn)
• Hannover Messe: Micron joined the Ford-Flex PCF chain, with each company using a different PCF application to demonstrate multi-vendor interoperability (Schlueter Langdon 2025c)
• ALSC Nashville, TN: Catena-X Hub North America launch, marked by an AIAG CTO handshake with a CX U.S. Board member (Schlueter Langdon 2025d; TSI online, DCL report, LinkedIn)
• AIAG CX-VIP Immersion Detroit, MI: Invitation-only event covering sustainability, quality, demand and capacity management, three-step onboarding, and a tariffs app in development (Schlueter Langdon 2025e; TSI online, DCL report, LinkedIn)
2026
• CES Las Vegas, NV: First Executive Roundtable (E-RT), sponsored by T-Mobile, on AI-data readiness for physical AI and digital twins (Telekom online, DCL report, LinkedIn)
• AIAG Spring Exec Roundtable, Detroit, MI: AI-data readiness for physical AI and digital twins (Telekom online, DCL report, LinkedIn)
• AIAG North American Catena-X Conf, Detroit, MI: keynote by Magna COO on the role of CX in digital transformation (Telekom online, DCL report, LinkedIn)

International expansion: Asia-Pacific
Asia-Pacific follows a different path from North America. In China, Catena-X itself is driving automotive ecosystem expansion through its Board leadership and dedicated China Taskforce. In parallel, Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems is extending dataspace technology more broadly across the region through its AI & Data internationalization activities, often with established telecommunications partners such as NTT in Japan. The chronology therefore combines CX-specific automotive adoption with broader dataspace interoperability and cross-regional data exchange.
2024
• Big Data Expo, Guiyang, China: T-Systems keynote on cross-border data sharing and the IDSA Dataspace Protocol, positioning sovereign dataspace technology and CX within global data-sharing standards (TSI online)
• NTT Docomo partnership, Japan: Joint test environment based on Eclipse Tractus-X and Eclipse Dataspace Components for Japanese companies and universities, testing Europe-Japan interoperability including mutual recognition of trust anchors (2024 NTT press release)
2025
• DENSO EcoPass, Japan: DENSO became the first Japan-headquartered company to achieve CX EcoPass certification, supported by T-Systems CX connectivity, providing an early commercial proof point for CX adoption in Japan and supporting Digital Product Passport and Battery Passport development (2025 Denso press release)
• China Automotive Industry Trusted Data Space: Following an MoU between CAAM, VDA, and the Catena-X Association at the Shanghai Auto Show, the CX China Taskforce launched a local-for-local pilot in 2025. It deployed CX connectivity on local Chinese infrastructure and began Company Certificate Management transactions with Chinese OEMs and suppliers (Schlueter Langdon & Wiemann 2025; TSI online)
• Korea-Europe PCF transaction: L&F in Korea and the automotive division of a major European Tier 1 completed the first peer-to-peer dataspace transaction between Korea and Europe, exchanging PCF data using Eclipse Tractus-X and demonstrating sovereign exchange across regions and regulatory environments (Schlueter Langdon 2026; TSI online)
• CX Supplier Onboarding Day Tokyo: T-Systems and partners including Siemens Japan, BMW Group, NTT Docomo Business, BASF, and Flex advanced supplier onboarding, the China pilot, and multiregional automotive data-sharing across Asia, Europe, and North America (TSI online)

References
Castellvi, S. 2026. Data spaces standardization landscape – Europe and international. Position paper (May, Version 2), International Data Spaces Association (IDSA), Dortmund, link
Clauwaert, T., E. Foote, L. Kabir, J. Maksimainen, and M. Van Hoey. 2023. The Scope 3 challenge: Solutions across the materials value chain. Article (May 5), McKinsey & Company, link
Colias, M. 2021. GM to recover $1.9 billion in Bolt-recall costs in deal with LG. The Wall Street Journal (October 12), link
Drucker, P. F. 1974. Management: Tasks, responsibilities, practices. Harper & Row, New York, NY: p. 61
Drucker, P. F. 1995. The information executives truly need. Harvard Business Review, 73(1, HBR McKinsey Award winner for the year’s best HBR article): 54–62
Flex. 2025. Ford honors Flex with 2025 Sustainability Supplier of the Year Award. Press release (June 3), link
Gaia-X. 2026. Gaia-X architecture document: 3.1 release (Section 4, Gaia-X Trust Framework Architecture), Gaia-X European Association for Data and Cloud AISBL, Brussels, link
Guggenberger, T. M., Schlueter Langdon, C., & Otto, B. 2025. Data Spaces as Meta-Organisations. European Journal of Information Systems, 34(5): 822–842, link
Otto, B. 2022. A federated infrastructure for European data spaces. Communications of the ACM, 65(4): 44–45
Otto, B., et al. 2019. IDS Reference Architecture Model 3.0. International Data Spaces Association (IDSA), Dortmund, link
Schlueter Langdon, C., and R. Sikora. 2020. Creating a data factory for data products. In: Lang, K. R., J. J. Xu et al. (eds). Smart Business: Technology and data enabled innovative business models and practices. Springer Nature, Switzerland: 43-55, link
Schlueter Langdon, C., and K. Schweichhart. 2022. Dataspaces: First applications in mobility and industry. In Otto, B. et al. (eds.). Dataspaces – Part IV Solutions & Applications. Springer Nature, Switzerland: 493-511, link

* Drucker, P. F. 1995. The information executives truly need. Harvard Business Review, 73(1, HBR McKinsey Award winner for the year’s best HBR article): p. 58