The award-winning suppliers with Oliver Jung, Chief Operating Officer and Michael Hartig, Vice President Purchasing Schaeffler expects excellent quality, reliability, competitive cost structures, service, innovation and global presence from its suppliers. The company's ten best suppliers were presented with the Schaeffler Supplier Award for their performance in 2015. Around 5,000 suppliers supply Schaeffler with production material at 74 manufacturing locations worldwide. 100 top suppliers and a total of 250 participants from 20 countries accepted Schaeffler’s invitation to Herzogenaurach. The ten best suppliers were chosen from this group during a prior selection process. Oliver Jung, Chief Operating Officer, and Michael Hartig, Vice President Purchasing Schaeffler, thanked the companies for their excellent work and presented the awards to: * Bilstein GmbH & Co.KG, Germany * Harsha Engineers Limited, India * KLS Ljubno d.o.o., Slovenia * LG Innotek Co., Ltd., Korea * Ortrander Eisenhütte GmbH, Germany * POSCO, Korea * Schleifscheibenfabrik Alfons Schmeier GmbH & Co. KG, Germany * Tan Kong Precision Tech, Taiwan * Uchiyama Manufacturing Corp., Japan * voestalpine Deutschland GmbH, Germany Oliver Jung emphasized in his speech: “We have invited you here today because we can depend on our long-standing partnership. Our aim is to collaborate with the best suppliers, who are an important part of our production system. We are achieving success together thanks to your delivery reliability, compliance with quality standards, your competitive cost structures and the optimization of the supply chain. This demands a high level of technical knowledge, specialization and qualifications in all areas from our suppliers. ” In his presentation, Micheal Hartig discussed the expectations and opportunities for collaboration with suppliers. “Our suppliers play an important role in helping Schaeffler to achieve its high targets in terms of quality, costs and delivery reliability. With this aim, Schaeffler and its best suppliers will dovetail more closely in future in order to reduce inventories and throughput times along the entire supply chain.” Schaeffler’s purchasing volume in 2016 is 7.8 billion euros. The Schaeffler Supplier Awards for production materials are presented every two years – alternately with the "Premium Supplier Awards" as part of the purchasing cooperation with Continental AG.