Supercharging auto salvage and recycling across North America

The world’s leading provider of alternative vehicle parts

Based in North America, LKQ Corporation is the world’s leading alternative and specialty auto parts provider with more than $12bn in annual revenue, and is a Fortune 500 company. Its customers are leading insurers and repairers across North America and Europe, with over 165 locations for its salvage and recycling business. For these customers, LKQ offers a broad range of OEM recycled and aftermarket parts, replacement systems, components and equipment, as well as technical services to repair and accessorize automobiles, trucks, recreational and performance vehicles.

Manually managing inventory at scale is repetitive and time-consuming 

LKQ processes around 800,000 used autos a year across over 165 locations. As each end-of-life vehicle comes in, it must be fully damage assessed for its value, before all its recyclable and reusable parts – that could reach well over 100 items for each car – are tagged and inventoried.

Because the entire inventory management process can be repetitive and time-consuming, LKQ were looking for ways to streamline operations, to automate how they detect and assess damage - after which, they procure the vehicle, tag and inventory many recyclable parts.

Yogi Shivdasani, LKQ’s Vice President of North America Supply Chain, reviewed several other solutions for artificial intelligence (AI) damage assessment, but in his words “nothing was remotely accurate enough to deploy in our live processes.”

Share on:

“Tractable is far more advanced than anything else out there. They’re a great partner and dug in to understand the specific needs of our organization, and moved fast to take us all the way from initial testing to production at scale. Tractable is obsessed with positive results and realizing any ROI." Yogi Shivdasani, VP of North America Supply Chain, LKQ

Faster and more accurate assessment of recyclable parts

Yogi Shivdasani saw a demo of Tractable’s Auto Inspector tool, and did his own test of the AI using photos from Google to assess a number of auto parts.  

“It came back in about three seconds with very, very accurate assessments of multiple parts with multiple levels of damage” says Shivdasani. “It truly worked. The AI instantly figured out the panels that were visible in the photos and how damaged they were. I was pretty blown away to be honest. And I thought this technology could benefit LKQ.”

Tractable’s Auto Inspector tool uses computer vision to assess the specific damage on a vehicle and then determines which parts can be recycled and reused. 

The AI is trained on millions of examples of auto damage, and can perform on a level with human intelligence, increasing the speed, consistency and accuracy of decisions.

Tractable worked closely with the LKQ team to ensure that the Auto Inspector tool was calibrated to LKQ’s industry standards regarding accurate damage assessment.

“Tractable’s approach is very collaborative,” said Shivdasani. “They really went in depth with us to understand our needs and our standards and to make sure the AI is delivering real value to us. Our engineering teams have been working hand-in-hand together for a super lightning-fast integration. They are extremely particular with calibration and testing.”

Consistently faster and more accurate

Request demo

10,000

vehicles AI can process daily

8%

boosting of human accuracy

300k+

accuracy of AI solution compared to human appraisers

Faster and more accurate assessment

Using Tractable Auto Inspector, LKQ is capable of assessing 10,000 salvage vehicles for sale each day, accurately determining the condition of their parts. It helps LKQ to quickly determine which cars have the least amount of damage and most usable panels to purchase for their inventory. LKQ has been able to deploy and fully scale Auto Inspector for millions of vehicles, rolling it out to thousands of employees across the globe. Since using Tractable Auto Inspector, LKQ’s staff accuracy has been boosted by approximately 8%, providing the business with a performance advantage. To date LKQ has recycled over 300,000 cars using Tractable's AI, which has improved the business’s inventory rates, the number of parts being recycled per vehicle, and is driving increased revenues and improved margins. “Tractable’s AI has enhanced our expertise with identifying high quality parts on salvage vehicles and to make sure those parts can be recycled and reused” confirms Shivdasani.

Applicable products

  • Tractable Auto Inspector

    Draw on millions of data points to accurately assess a car’s condition throughout its life cycle

    Discover moreAutomotive
Yogi Shivdasani, VP of North America Supply Chain LKQ
“Tractable is far more advanced than anything else out there. They’re a great partner and dug in to understand the specific needs of our organization, and moved fast to take us all the way from initial testing to production at scale. Tractable is obsessed with positive results and realizing any ROI.”

Request a demo

Request a demo to see how Tractable can transform your business

Request demo

Further reading