SAQ (Self-Assessment Questionnaire): What suppliers need to know
What the SAQ questionnaire is, who requires it, and how automotive suppliers can prepare for it efficiently – without having to start from scratch with every request.
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SAQ stands for Self-Assessment Questionnaire – a standardized self-disclosure questionnaire that emerged from the automotive initiative Drive Sustainability. Anyone receiving an SAQ request as a supplier for the first time is usually faced with two questions simultaneously: What exactly is required here – and why now? Both can be answered relatively easily once you know where the format comes from and how it repeats in practice.
What SAQ is
SAQ stands for Self-Assessment Questionnaire – a standardized self-disclosure questionnaire that originally emerged from the Drive Sustainability initiative, a coalition of major automotive manufacturers (including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen Group, Volvo). The aim of the SAQ is to collect sustainability data from suppliers in a standardized format, instead of each OEM using its own form.
In practice, this means: If you fill out an SAQ once, you have processed a format that is potentially accepted by several customers at the same time – a difference compared to individual, customer-specific questionnaires.
Who typically requests an SAQ
SAQ requests usually come from automotive OEMs or their direct suppliers (Tier 1), who themselves must pass SAQ data on to their customers. When an SAQ request arrives, it is typically not a voluntary marketing activity by the requesting company, but part of a structured supply chain data collection process that affects the entire supply chain.
What is typically requested in the SAQ
Environmental management: Energy consumption, CO₂ emissions, environmental certifications (e.g. ISO 14001)
Labor and human rights: Working conditions, occupational safety, prevention of child labor
Ethics and compliance: Anti-corruption, fair competition, data protection
Supply chain management: Whether and how your own suppliers are audited to similar standards
The content of the environmental section overlaps heavily with what is also needed for a CO₂ footprint or other self-disclosures (see Filling out supplier self-disclosure).
The typical mistake with the first SAQ request
Many businesses treat the first SAQ request as a one-off, isolated project – often under time pressure because a customer deadline is looming. The result: values are compiled manually and under time pressure, without structured storage for the next request. Since experience shows that SAQ requests are recurring – new customers, annual updates – the effort is then needlessly repeated.
Practical preparation: the structured way
Obtain environmental data from an ongoing source, rather than reconstructing it from annual invoices under time pressure.
Document answers centrally, including the date and source of each entry – important for follow-up questions and updates.
Plan for recurring updates, instead of starting completely from scratch with every new SAQ request.
Comparison with other questionnaire formats, since SAQs overlap in content with other self-disclosures.
How strait simplifies SAQ preparation
strait records energy and environmental data continuously via IoT sensor technology – exactly the database that is most frequently requested in the environmental section of an SAQ. This first lowers your own energy costs and at the same time provides reliable, up-to-date values for answering the SAQ, instead of having to compile them from scratch under time pressure with every request.
Received an SAQ request? In a demo, we will show you how environmental data can be prepared in a structured and reusable way for this purpose.
Ready for the next SAQ request?
See how strait continuously records environmental data and makes it reusable for SAQ requests.
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