How far into your supply chain can you confidently prove where your parts and materials come from? For automotive suppliers preparing for DDRT requests, that question is becoming increasingly important.
In DDRT in practice: A hands-on workshop for faster, scalable compliance, experts from AIAG, Kharon, and Resilinc came together to explore what DDRT readiness requires and how suppliers can prepare for the Due Diligence Reporting Template (DDRT).
When webinar attendees were asked about their biggest obstacle to completing DDRTs, identifying sub-tier suppliers emerged as a leading challenge. Establishing the supplier relationships behind a product becomes increasingly complex as companies move upstream into materials, manufacturing sites, and relationships several tiers removed from the direct supplier.
The discussion examined how suppliers can address those visibility gaps, validate supply chain relationships, and maintain the evidence OEMs expect as part of the due diligence process.
Understand what the DDRT is designed to demonstrate
AIAG’s Forced Labor Due Diligence Program establishes a common framework for the automotive industry. As part of the program, six participating OEMs—Ford, General Motors, Honda, Stellantis, Toyota, and Nissan—collaborated on the DDRT to create a more consistent approach to forced labor due diligence reporting. The DDRT gives suppliers a standardized way to document their due diligence processes and supporting evidence, helping reduce the burden of responding to similar customer requests in different formats. Selected supplier submissions are expected to begin in September 2026.
One distinction is especially important for suppliers preparing for those requests. Tanya Bolden, Vice President of Corporate Responsibility for AIAG, explained:
“The DDRT in and of itself is not a due diligence process. It is a tool to be able to gather the information and then analyze it and report it.”
The template captures the work an organization has done to understand its supply chain and investigate potential risks. The information reported through the DDRT therefore needs an established process behind it. Suppliers need to understand which organizations are connected to the products they provide and maintain documentation that supports their conclusions.
That process also needs to continue as supply chains and risks change. Bolden emphasized:
“Due diligence has to be practiced, it has to be operationalized, you have to be vigilant in what you’re doing, and suppliers have to take an active role in conducting those assessments.”
For suppliers, DDRT readiness reaches well beyond preparation for a reporting deadline. The underlying supply chain information needs to remain current to support ongoing due diligence.
Address the visibility gaps the DDRT brings into focus
DDRT requirements are putting automotive suppliers’ deepest visibility gaps under a microscope.
As Paul Rossi, Director of Automotive Expert Services for Resilinc, explained, a modern vehicle contains tens of thousands of parts and major subcomponents, each of which can lead to additional suppliers, sites, and materials further upstream. While most organizations have visibility into their direct suppliers, that visibility becomes more difficult to maintain across deeper tiers. The webinar explored how a compliance concern can originate with a material supplier or manufacturing facility several tiers removed from the company responsible for the finished component.
For DDRT purposes, those relationships also require validation. Autonomous mapping can help organizations identify likely supply chain connections, but OEM reporting requires validated information about the supply chain being reported. Rossi noted:
“Autonomous mapping provides value for many use cases. But when it comes to due diligence reporting, you need confirmed supply chain data that you can confidently provide to your OEM partners.”
This is where multi-tier visibility becomes central to due diligence. Suppliers need sufficient visibility to identify relationships requiring investigation and verified information to support what they ultimately report.
Build evidence that can support the submission
Effective due diligence requires more than mapping the supply chain. Suppliers must identify potential risks, validate information, and document the steps they take to investigate exposure. The completed DDRT, along with supporting evidence, gives OEMs a clear record of that work and the information behind a supplier’s conclusions.
“The OEMs are very adamant,” said Bolden. “They don’t want their suppliers to simply do a Google search of all the companies that appear to be on their list and provide them just a data dump. They do want their verification. They do want the suppliers to do their due diligence.”
Supplier questionnaires and declarations contribute to that record. Policies and supporting documentation provide additional evidence. When a potential concern is identified, the organization needs to maintain the information gathered through its investigation and the actions taken in response.
The practical challenge is often bringing that information together. Relevant evidence may sit across procurement systems, supplier files, emails, and spreadsheets while the compliance team needs to establish a clear record of its due diligence activities.
Add independent intelligence to supplier-provided information
Supplier participation remains essential to the process, but supplier disclosures have natural limitations. A supplier can report the information available to it but may have limited awareness of exposure further upstream. Kharon’s Global Director of Strategy, Ethan Woolley, clarified:
“Supplier disclosures, by definition, are disclosures from suppliers. So that could be either what a supplier is willing to disclose or able to disclose.”
That becomes particularly important when supplier relationships extend deeper into the network, where exposure can be difficult to see. As Ethan explained, “suppliers may not be intentionally misleading, but simply don’t know they’re exposed to risk deeper in their supply chains.” This makes deeper visibility critical to identifying potential exposure before it becomes a compliance issue.
The webinar frames the work around two connected questions. Organizations need to establish who is in the supply chain and understand what risks those companies may be exposed to.
Kharon adds an independent intelligence layer, drawing on corporate and trade records, government documents, local-language media, social media, and other public sources to identify companies and relationships associated with forced labor and other compliance concerns. Its language and regional expertise can help uncover connections that supplier disclosures or conventional data aggregation may miss.
As Woolley explained, this makes the work “more of an intelligence question than a data aggregation question.” Rather than relying solely on supplier declarations or government watchlists, Kharon can surface relationships and risk indicators that warrant investigation earlier, helping teams take a more proactive approach to potential exposure.
Resilinc makes that intelligence actionable by connecting it to mapped suppliers, sites, parts, and materials across the multi-tier network. Together, Resilinc and Kharon help teams answer two critical due diligence questions: Who is in our supply chain—and what risks are they connected to?
This context is especially important in complex global supply chains, where upstream sourcing can involve regions facing heightened regulatory scrutiny and relationships that may be difficult to establish through supplier declarations alone. Independent intelligence helps direct further investigation toward the relevant supplier relationship rather than treating location alone as evidence of risk.
Operationalize DDRT due diligence
Once a team identifies a supplier relationship that requires further review, the due diligence process moves from visibility to action. Resilinc’s Forced Labor Compliance Agent continuously monitors for potential exposure, including CBP/DHS entity-list changes and high-risk materials, and connects identified risks to the organization’s supply chain to assess potential business impact. Teams can then launch supplier assessments, track responses, and collect verified information and supporting evidence. That supplier-validated data can ultimately support DDRT generation and help create a more defensible record of due diligence.
Bryce Nelson, a Senior Solutions Consultant at Resilinc, explained during the agent demonstration:
“What I like about this workflow is that it follows the same process most compliance teams already use, but it uses agentic AI to make it much faster, easier, and more accurate.”
The role of automation is particularly relevant to the administrative work surrounding an investigation. The idea isn’t to replace your compliance team; it’s to take care of the repetitive work so they can spend more time reviewing the exceptions and making informed decisions. Compliance specialists remain responsible for evaluating the information and determining the appropriate response. Automating supplier outreach and progress tracking can give those teams more time to focus on the cases that require their expertise.
Test your DDRT readiness against a real scenario
The webinar closed with practical steps suppliers can use to evaluate their current readiness. Suppliers can strengthen their readiness by first organizing fragmented supplier data, identifying high-risk exposure, and addressing gaps in DDRT documentation. Establishing clear ownership of the due diligence process is also critical to ensuring teams can respond quickly when issues arise. A mock CBP detention scenario can then help test the process end to end, uncover gaps, and validate that the right data, documentation, and response workflows are in place.
The stress test turns DDRT readiness into a concrete operational exercise. A shipment is detained. The organization needs to determine which supplier relationships are relevant and locate the supporting documentation. The people responsible for the response need access to the information required to act within the available timeframe.
Paul Rossi frames the exercise through the questions teams should be able to answer: “Run the scenario. A shipment gets detained on Monday morning. Who gets the call? What information do you pull? How do you respond in 30 days?”
DDRT readiness is ultimately a reflection of due diligence maturity. Suppliers need reliable visibility into relevant upstream relationships, a clear process for investigating potential exposure, and documentation that stays current as supplier networks change. The DDRT provides the automotive industry with a common framework for communicating that work, helping suppliers demonstrate their due diligence with greater consistency and confidence.
Hear the full discussion on demand
Go deeper into AIAG’s Forced Labor Due Diligence Program with Tanya Bolden, hear Ethan Woolley explain how independent intelligence can help identify risk within complex upstream relationships, and see Bryce Nelson demonstrate how Resilinc supports the end-to-end DDRT workflow in practice.
