Two German companies, SupplyOn AG and Seeburger AG, last week announced an extensive cooperation agreement that wll include integration of the two companies' business-to-business service platforms.

The partnership will create the world's largest supply chain network in the automotive and production industries.

SupplyOn's North American headquarters is in Bloomfield Hills.

With several thousand customers, SupplyOn AG is the largest supplier of Web-based services for supply chain management in the automotive and manufacturing industries worldwide. Seeburger AG is a specialist in business-to-business integration on a global scale and provides these systems both for customer implementation and as a complete outsourcing package.

More than 15,000 customers around the world rely on the software and service solutions offered by these two companies.

The integrated service promises to bring the benefits of true electronic data interchange for small companies or those with small order volumes. It will offer integration with both customers and suppliers through a single service provider.

The other party to benefit from the partnership are the 5,000 suppliers that already communicate with their customers via SupplyOn by WebEDI because they will be able to conveniently reach all other customers through one central system.

The Seeburger outsourcing services will give both target groups faster and much simpler access to customers. The content and connections for linking to B2B hubs are already available from Seeburger and can therefore be used by SupplyOn customers.