Autor: Horst Wildemann

Customer orientation and individualization will be two of the biggest challenges for companies. They need to expect their business model to become more complex as the range and diversity of their products and services will increase. Those who find a smart approach of managing the complexity will have a decisive competitive advantage. Those who use modularization across products, services, production and the organisation, will be prepared to deliver individual value propositions more quickly and their profitability will not be jeopardised by their own complexity.

The phase-out of nuclear energy decided by the politicians and the goal of significantly aligning the energy mix with renewable energies will give the industry great growth potential. Digitalization and the resulting technologies, such as sensors, robotics and assistance systems, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality, are helping companies realise their potential. The study “Industrialization of the Wind Industry” by the Technical University of Munich has shown that digitalization will have a positive effect on the “Levelized Cost of Energy” (LCOE).

Customers, society and politics challenge companies to ensure the sustainability of their value creation. Many stakeholder groups have an eye on the logistics. These groups constantly raise new requirements and regulations affecting companies’ businesses.  This is the reason why it is not sufficient anymore to react on changing requirements. Companies can gain competitive advantages if they anticipate trends in sustainability and react immediately. In this context, this article presents an approach for trend monitoring and a change agent suppor-ting to react effectively and efficiently on trends in sustainability.

The enormous drive and steady economic growth make India one of the largest future markets for German companies. Besides China, India is the most populous country in the world and about ten times larger than Germany. Even in times of crisis, India showed a constant growth rate. A key requirement for a stable economic and social development is sustainable energy supply. The Indian government is committed to renewable energy resources as they deliver a contribution for climate and environmental protection - besides economic and social evolution. To set up capacities of renewable energy, India depends on the support of foreign companies. This offers great market opportunities for German enterprises as they are appreciated as worldwide technology leaders.

Production systems require a continuous development to contribute to the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. Therefore, the audit of production systems enables the determination of the current maturity level of production. This allows for the identification of deficits and the definition of starting points for a sustainable optimization of the production. This article focuses on the development of a maturity level based self-assessment concept for the evaluation of the sustainability of production systems.

Against the background of complex and volatile value chains the success factor quality is gaining increasingly in importance. Today, product quality and process quality as well as their continuous improvement are the basis for entrepreneurial success. Thus quality controlling becomes a central function in order to assure competitiveness of companies. New approaches are in demand in order to fulfil quality requirements along value chains and in order to link quality management systems with quality controlling. By an inter-divisional and company-wide implementation of Quality Gates these requirements can be met.

Globalization of world trade leads to an increased scope and scale of product counterfeiting. More companies and industries are affected. Counterfeiters get more and more professional. German companies have to protect themselves better. Legal measures are not enough - comprehensive strategies that combine legal, management and technical measures are necessary to fight counterfeiting. The research project ProAuthent is focused on authentication and labelling technologies as one important step towards a integrated protection against counterfeiting.

As the core of the added value the production meets new challenges. Against the background of new trends and changing market mechanism an adjustment of existing production structures is crucial. New sources for earning money can be found in the combination of different leverages which result finally in increasing the economic value added. The objective is to find a combination of above-average performance and cost leadership and to realize these in an integrated production concept. In these redesigned production systems above-average performance is based on the overall connection between methods, people and technologies over the whole supply chain.

Global companies need a valid decision basis. The choice of a specific location is still not a standard decision within companies, but a mostly data-driven and finally strategic decision on top management level. The challenge there is to combine all single aspects according costs, qualitative and quantitative chances and risks to a conclusive picture. The decision process of production site management is an important strategic task, where as its quality can be significantly improved by using dedicated instruments.

Due to its strategic importance, the performance of Research & Development (R&D) has to be analyzed on a detailed level when evaluating a company in the context of a possible takeover. The main question concerns the set-up and the risks of the R&D programme. In addition to current R&D projects, planned R&D activities have to be taken into account. In the context of a R&D Due Diligence many different areas of analysis have to be handled and evaluated to receive a meaningful result for the evaluation of the company.