CSM Worldwide Debuts the OEM Scorecard: A New Way to Analyze the Opportunities and Risks of Doing Business with Automotive OEMs

FRANKFURT, Germany, Sept. 20 -- CSM Worldwide, the leading provider of market intelligence and forecasting to the automotive industry, today presented the OEM Scorecard to leading automotive suppliers. The OEM Scorecard is a strategic-analysis tool for automotive suppliers, OEMs and financial analysts that measures and provides transparency to many of the performance issues facing the world's largest automakers, and offers insights to how each OEM is prepared to meet its future challenges.

The defining characteristic of the OEM Scorecard is CSM's ability to look deeper than publicly available annual reports and combine their global forecasting database with a vast network of industry contacts. The result is a current, forward-looking assessment with several metrics that have never been tracked or quantified in an easy-to-understand format. As a business- planning tool, the OEM Scorecard:

  *  Defines risks and opportunities of doing business with an OEM.
  *  Provides a comprehensive set of metrics that allows for comparison of
     OEMs.
  *  Describes stated and inferred strategies of each OEM.

"By rolling these metrics together into one cohesive report that allows parallel comparisons, we can make valid assumptions about the future growth potential of an automaker," said Craig Cather, president and CEO, CSM Worldwide. "With the OEM Scorecard, suppliers have an ideal tool for looking at an OEM's strengths and weaknesses and considering how the company is positioned for the future."

The Scorecard includes approximately 20 discreet metrics across several main categories: manufacturing, products, leadership & organization, ER&D, supply chain, retail & distribution, and financial. The top 13 automakers in the world -- those with vehicle production in excess of 1 million per year -- are included in the assessment; this group accounts for more than 90 percent of global market share. All measures are global in scope; for example, capacity utilization for a specific OEM is measured globally.

For a copy of the OEM Scorecard presentation and current data, please contact Debbie Keipper at CSM Worldwide: +1-248-380-9000 or debbiekeipper@csmauto.com . Expanded analysis on the OEM Scorecard and/or individual metrics is also available.

CSM Worldwide provides trusted automotive market forecasting services and strategic planning solutions to the world's top automotive manufacturers, suppliers and financial organizations. CSM Worldwide covers the global automotive environment from Detroit, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai, Grand Rapids, Sao Paulo, Budapest and Bangalore.