From "paper chaos" to intelligent quality assurance: How VDA standards are revolutionizing sampling
Competition in the automotive industry is intensifying, and with it the pressure to drastically reduce development times. One often underestimated bottleneck in product development is the quality assurance (QA) of purchased parts. In a recent article for the prostep ivip ProduktDaten Journal, Dr. Heike Ulmer-Langner from Mercedes-Benz Group AG explains why the future of material sampling must be digital.
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The challenge: Manual processes and isolated solutions
Although quality assurance requirements are high, test results are often still evaluated manually today. Different Excel templates, PDF files, and email as a transmission channel, as well as a lack of interface standards between suppliers, laboratories, and OEMs, lead to high post-processing costs and susceptibility to errors.
The solution: Standardization with VDA 231-300 and 231-301
To put an end to this "paper chaos," the industry is relying on new standards that were developed as part of a VDA project group:
VDA 231-300: Regulates how material definitions and applicable standards are stored directly in the 3D data set.
VDA 231-301: Enables structured, digital mapping of test report results based on a generic data model (JSON schema).
Real-time validation instead of Excel upload
A central element of the new process is the use of a collaborative platform as a communication hub. Instead of sending static documents back and forth, the platform enables automated target/actual comparisons in real time. This means:
Error prevention: Suppliers can identify early on whether their results meet the requirements.
Efficiency: The QA process is decoupled from time constraints and accelerated.
Transparency: Requirements are interpreted once and are clearly visible to all parties involved in the supply chain.
Practical example: Interior emissions
The example of testing according to VDA 278 (interior emissions) at Mercedes-Benz shows how well this works. By switching from individual Excel templates to the uniform data format of the VDA 231-301 sub-schema, measurement results can now be validated automatically and imported into downstream systems—without any manual typing.
Conclusion Digitizing material sampling is more than just doing away with paper. It creates trustworthy data chains from the testing device to the manufacturer and ensures faster, more reliable products.
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