Not becoming digital means dying" is a bold statement that firstly needs to be refuted in today's world.
We support our clients with our know-how not only in strategically utilizing their data, systems, and tools within their operational framework, but also in developing and implementing smart products and services, leading to sustainable business models within their product and process landscapes.
We develop with you concepts for effective and efficient data utilization. This includes evaluating your available data sources, quality, consistency, and availability. We devise concepts and strategies with you for data-driven process control as guiding elements in leadership. Using machine learning methods (AI), we collaborate with you to create situational prediction models for specific events (dynamic intervention thresholds) and data-driven approaches for machine and process optimization. We assist you in integrating sensors into your existing products and processes. Leveraging real-life data from product lifecycles, we cooperate with you to explore new business areas such as aftermarket services, predictive maintenance concepts, leasing options, pay-as-you-go models, product-as-a-service, and more.
We are your strategic partner in developing future-proof products, processes, and services towards achieving your "Digital Excellence"!
Our services
- Facilitation of creative workshops
- Evaluation of product lifecycle (Life-Cycle Engineering) for sustainable potential analysis
- Material structure analysis
- Target-specific requirement analyses considering:
- Markets (regulatory, intercultural regulations)
- Generational specifics
- Trends over time
- Technology scouting
- Practical evaluation methods, utility value analyses, success measurement
- Feasibility analyses
- Evaluations against state-of-the-art and research
- Inventory and assessment of the current state
- Development of action areas, prioritization for short, medium, and long-term measures
- Support for production and product testing phases
Benefits for our clients
- Data-driven process control
- Critical assessment of your digitalization maturity
- Structured and data-driven machine and process optimization
- Identification and visualization of potential correlations and interactions within value creation levels (horizontal and vertical) through data
- Development of a data-driven process understanding
- Smart products, processes and services
- Development of new business areas such as
- Aftermarket, predictive maintenance concepts
- Installment plan
- Pay-as-you-go concepts
- Product-as-a-service concepts
Integration of sensor technology into existing products and processes
What relevance will digital excellence and services have for companies in the future?
According to theories in work science, two main future scenarios are emerging within the dynamics between human, technology, and organization. On one hand, increasing automation and digitalization are substituting repetitive human tasks with technology, referred to as the automation scenario and cyber-physical systems. This allows human resources to be reallocated to other tasks. On the other hand, there is a trend of enhancing human capabilities through assistance systems. This scenario enables employees to perform complex tasks more reliably and quickly with reduced physical and mental strain.
Companies face rapidly changing challenges, such as shorter delivery times and the demand for product customization down to the batch size one. Additionally, there is a need to meet sustainability requirements in social, economic, and ecological dimensions. The rapid advancement of technological maturity leads to the quicker adoption of emerging technologies, creating opportunities for new trends and business models. In the workplace of tomorrow, humans as smart operators will be provided with the right information at the right time and place through AI and Big Data.
What roles does consulting play in this context?
To tackle these challenges, a shift in competencies will be required, emphasizing more programming skills and analytical abilities among employees. For the consulting world, this means setting the right course for the working world of tomorrow at a strategic level. It is essential to accompany organizations through transformation processes in such a way that affected individuals become active participants. At our clients, we strive to motivate the actors through organizational learning so that changes are intrinsically driven by grassroots initiatives.
Due to regulatory and customer-specific requirements, large amounts of data are already being stored across the vertical and horizontal value chain. However, only a few databases are used for the operational control of processes. We work with our clients to develop strategies and assist them in deriving objective key performance indicators (KPIs) from existing data. Business areas should be enabled to use KPIs as management tools and control limits. We also support process optimizers and setup technicians in optimizing machines using statistical methods and machine learning models. The goal is to move away from heuristic approaches such as the "trial-and-error" principle. This reduces machine downtime and sustainably improves process quality.