An IT malfunction paralyzed the Volkswagen Group’s central network on Wednesday.
Production in several plants is at a standstill, a company spokesman confirmed in the evening. A crisis team was convened.
“We can confirm an IT malfunction 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 Volkswagen subsidiary Audi is also affected by the IT disruption, as an Audi spokeswoman said in the evening when asked by the dpa. The extent to which this is the case is still being investigated.
The company 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. The “Handelsblatt” had previously reported on the IT disruption.
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 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.
At the end of August, VW’s rival Toyota Motor suffered 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
VW shares fell 0.66 percent to 109.02 euros in after-hours trading on Tradegate.
WOLFSBURG (dpa-AFX)
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