Everything You Need to Know About AIAG's Standardized Approach to Forced Labor Due Diligence
The automotive industry is facing increasing scrutiny regarding forced labor in global supply chains. In response, the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) has developed a comprehensive new reporting framework in coordination with major OEMs for suppliers at all tiers of product value chains.
The Forced Labor Due Diligence Program is designed in partnership with Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan, Stellantis, and Toyota, to streamline forced labor due diligence in the automotive supply chain. It falls to Tier 1 suppliers to lead the communication of their supply chains’ risk and deliver consistent, consolidated information to OEMs.
Forced labor is just one of several interconnected challenges — including volatility in tariff policy, disruptions of the global supply chain, restrictions on critical mineral sourcing and imports on connected vehicles and components regulations — that demand unprecedented visibility deep into multi-tier value chains.
Altana is a product network connecting enterprises, logistics providers, and government agencies, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Altana helps OEMs and their suppliers gain advantage in a dynamic trade environment. The company brings together the public and private sectors on a shared source of truth that enables more efficient, compliant global commerce, giving companies the power to master their product value chains.
What IS AIAG’s Forced Labor Due Diligence Program?
At the core of the Forced Labor Due Diligence Program is the Due Diligence Reporting Template (DDRT), a standardized reporting mechanism that OEMs are encouraging suppliers to adopt. AIAG has selected Altana as a preferred technology provider to help suppliers and OEMs address the new compliance demands in the most collaborative fashion, and ensure they receive the highest quality support while doing so.
The AIAG DDRT is designed to give OEMs a method to assess forced labor risk in their supply networks. The challenge for Tier 1 suppliers: Most lack multi-tier visibility into those networks, and rely on outdated audits and manual supplier surveys that are incomplete, slow, and out of date the moment they’re submitted.
Altana delivers dynamic, real-time mapping of product value chains. Our platform connects enterprises, logistics providers, and government agencies, including CBP, to build a shared source of truth for trade.
With Altana, Tier 1 suppliers and OEMs can:
- Instantly map their full supply chain beyond Tier 1, revealing hidden risks across all tiers and at a product level
- Identify exposure to forced labor, at the supplier level and across corporate affiliates and indirect connections
- Automatically format reports into AIAG-standardized DDRT submissions, eliminating manual data collection and formatting errors
- Gain dynamic intelligence and analysis on supply chains to keep ahead of regulatory and geopolitical shifts
AIAG has selected Altana as a preferred technology provider for DDRT implementation because our solution provides the most complete, real-time visibility into multi-tier product value chains, ensuring automotive suppliers and OEMs meet due diligence expectations while turning compliance into a competitive advantage.
The challenge in this standardized process lies in their unprecedented scope: Most companies don't have dynamic multi-tier visibility into their product value chains, nor detailed risk analysis beyond Tier 1 suppliers.
After years of manual auditing and questionnaire-based solutions, OEMs are discovering the limits of their understanding of their own supplier networks. Altana has found that more than 98% of automakers' exposure to tariffs on aluminum comes from suppliers in Tier 2 or deeper in the value chain. That obscurity creates significant challenges for identifying forced labor risks, particularly as supply networks evolve to adapt to global trade volatility, regulatory changes, and geopolitical pressures. While visibility challenges affect both tariff management and forced labor detection, the DDRT specifically focuses on providing transparency into forced labor risks throughout the entire supply chain. The DDRT approach provides a level of supply chain transparency that goes far beyond traditional compliance approaches. You'll need to know:
- Who your suppliers' suppliers are, multiple tiers deep
- Which entities in your extended network are exposed to forced labor
- The precise nature of each risk connection, whether direct or through a corporate affiliate
- Which risks are relevant to your products
The DDRT enables Tier 1 automotive suppliers to lead the communication of supply chain risk, using the common DDRT and sharing directly with affected manufacturers. The same visibility capabilities required for DDRT implementation provide significant advantages in addressing other areas, including:
- Navigating exposure to fast-changing tariff policy (where 98% of impact occurs at Tier 2 or deeper)
- Managing critical mineral sourcing for EV battery supply chains
- Preparing for new regulations like the U.S. Department of Commerce's restrictions on Chinese and Russian-made components in vehicle connectivity systems
- Maintaining business continuity during supply chain disruptions
Why These Reporting Standards Matter
This standardized approach represents a significant shift in how automotive supply chains manage forced-labor compliance. Rather than merely documenting compliance among your immediate suppliers, you'll be able to effectively demonstrate that your entire supply network complies.
Legacy methods of mapping supplier networks are inadequate for the task: Manual surveys can take hundreds of hours, yield incomplete data (a 10% response beyond Tier 1), and are immediately out of date. Data scraped from online sources and organized using AI lacks relevance to your specific product lines and creates noise. In addition, suppliers waste valuable resources compiling the same data in dozens of different formats to match each OEM's template requirements. The DDRT and Altana's solution create a standardized approach that streamlines data collection and sharing across the industry, eliminating redundancies and ensuring consistency while providing the multi-tier visibility and risk detection capabilities that both OEMs and suppliers need.
This challenge mirrors other critical issues facing the industry. For example, new tariffs can amount to $68 billion in annual exposure to just 22 auto component tariff codes, as Altana’s analysis shows, and there are ongoing and unexpected supply chain disruptions like the February Parker Lord facility fire and the imminent U.S. restrictions on Chinese and Russian-made components in vehicle connectivity systems. All that demands the same fundamental capability as managing forced labor risk: to see, understand, and manage multi-tier value chains with precision and speed. How Altana Supports the AIAG Standardized Approach
Altana directly addresses the complex demands with a comprehensive approach that streamlines compliance. At the foundation of our solution is mapping of multi-tier product value chains. We construct your entire extended supply network from your existing supplier data, revealing connections and dependencies that would otherwise remain hidden.
Forced Labor Compliance
Altana identifies forced labor exposure throughout your entire network with a full spectrum of risk configurations, from direct transactional connections to forced labor-linked entities to more complex indirect connections through networks of corporate affiliates. We distinguish between relevant and irrelevant transaction pathways and pinpoint exactly where in the chain the risk exists, providing context that's critical for meaningful risk assessment and remediation.
Altana automatically formats all findings into the exact DDRT templates designed in collaboration with OEMs, which have been verified with AIAG leadership to ensure they meet all specifications. This solution delivers complete reports, enabling you to respond promptly to OEM requests. By integrating these capabilities into a single solution, Altana streamlines AIAG standardized approach and turns it into a strategic advantage.
The value of Altana's multi-tier visibility extends well beyond forced labor compliance. The same platform capabilities that power your DDRT reporting can be applied to other critical business challenges:
Tariff Management and Supply Chain Resilience
With Altana's Tariff Scenario Planner, you can pinpoint exposure down to the shipment level, identify suppliers posing the highest cost risk, and rapidly find alternative sources outside affected trade lanes.
When supply chain disruptions occur, this same multi-tier visibility enables companies to quickly map impact across their product value chains and take immediate action. Altana's platform allows automotive manufacturers to rapidly discover alternative suppliers ranked by market presence and access detailed network insights for making informed sourcing decisions.
Critical Minerals and EV Battery Supply Chains For automotive companies seizing market share in electric vehicles, managing critical mineral sourcing in battery supply chains also requires deep visibility into supply chains.
Connected Vehicle Regulations The Bureau of Industry and Security's landmark rule prohibiting Chinese and Russian-made components in vehicle connectivity and autonomous systems by Model Year 2027-2030 creates another imperative for supply chain transformation. Altana enables automotive manufacturers to identify where and how components used in connectivity and autonomous driving systems originate from restricted countries, even when sources are masked by intermediaries in other countries.
The Power of Multi-Tier Value Chain Visibility By integrating these capabilities into a single platform, Altana transforms compliance challenges into strategic advantages. Our comprehensive approach enables unprecedented visibility, insight, and collaboration from the inside out, beginning with your own data. For DDRT implementation specifically, we automatically format all findings into the exact templates required by OEMs, verified with AIAG leadership to ensure they meet all specifications. This ensures your DDRT submissions are accurate, comprehensive, and delivered on time to meet OEM expectations.
As the automotive industry navigates these interconnected challenges, those who manage their value chains strategically are best positioned to seize opportunities to build more resilient, transparent, and secure supply chains.
The DDRT approach serves as a catalyst for developing deeper supply chain intelligence that benefits your entire organization. Whether addressing forced labor compliance through DDRT, managing tariff exposure, securing critical mineral sourcing for battery supply chains, preparing for connected vehicle regulations, or responding to supply chain disruptions, the fundamental capability needed is the same: seeing, understanding, and managing multi-tier value chains with precision and speed.
With Altana, you're not just solving today's DDRT implementation challenges but are also building the foundation for a more resilient, compliant, and cost-effective future in an increasingly complex global marketplace.
See Altana's DDRT capabilities below and discover how our platform can help you navigate the complex challenges of today's automotive industry.
