March 27, 2014—The Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA) has issued a plea to the automotive manufacturing community to provide professional automotive recyclers with access to original equipment manufacturers (OEM) parts data.

In a speech delivered at the 14th International Automotive Recyclers Congress in Brussels, Belgium, ARA CEO Michael E. Wilson called on the automotive manufacturers in attendance "to become better economic, environmental and safety partners by releasing OEM build sheet data to the professional automotive industry's inventory management entities, just as they do for insurance companies and the collision repair industry."

Wilson noted that "auto manufacturers have placed major restrictions on the dissemination of this data so that it cannot be integrated into professional automotive recyclers' inventory management systems.” Wilson described the domino effect that this lack of data has on consumers.

"Without this important data about the parts that OEMs originally manufactured, professional automotive recyclers are not able to seamlessly integrate their OEM parts inventory into estimating and collision repair platforms and consumers will have fewer choices when making important decisions about the repair of their vehicles,” he said.