Machinery and plant engineering

Publication: OPPORTUNITY - Facts for decision makers

In this OPPORTUNITY we take a look at machinery and plant engineering and discuss how companies in this sector can position themselves future-proof and systematically expand their business. Various approaches to expanding the business will be presented, based on the product-market portfolio. Here, the focus lies on operational excellence, activities regarding a market approach and innovation that concentrates on customers.

Under the keyword operational excellence, the possibilities for increasing efficiency as to aquisition and execution of projects are illustrated. In doing so, the modularization of machines and systems will be discussed among other things. In the context of approaching the market, we focus on data-based market development, the importance of which is also growing in machinery and plant engineering. The chapter “Innovation concentrating on customers” explains how machine and plant manufacturers can generate more bussiness with additional services and digital products. Finally, we present ten patterns for success that we have derived from the different positionings of companies with above-average success.

Contents of this OPPORTUNITY

positioning by the range of services
positioning in markets
approaches to expanding business
10 patterns of success in machinery and plant engineering

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Successful collaboration

“This project was important for our profitability. We were able to maintain our day-to-day business and complete the project at the same time – and my team kept their spirits up. The profitability of my business area for components has been increased tremendously and we are prepared for the future: we are introducing optimizations to our range of products much faster.”

Heinrich Steinbrecher

Managing Partner

Bürener Maschinenfabrik GmbH

“I strongly believe lean management can set the foundation for good business performance in a dynamic market environment as in China. The UNITY team successfully motivated our lean agents and our management team to identify improvement potentials and develop an implementation plan. We are very pleased to see that all of the initiated actions are being managed by lean agents now and that all of our employees are participating in them.”

Markus Clement

Managing Director

EMAG Taicang

Project Stories

Setting a foundation for future-oriented innovation management

Machinery and plant engineering
Setting a foundation for future-oriented innovation management

Scenarios for Strategy Development and Innovation Planning

In order to secure and further expand its leading role in the aviation industry for the future, Lufthansa and UNITY conducted a group-wide foresight process. Alternative future scenarios were developed through the year 2030 for each of the four business segments: Aviation (consisting of Lufthansa Passage, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Eurowings and Brussels Airlines), Catering (LSG Sky Chefs), Logistics (Lufthansa Cargo) as well as Bonus Programs (Miles & More). Based on this, future business opportunities, areas of risk and customer needs were identified for each individual business segment and they were used to derive six to ten strategic innovation fields. In the projects, Lufthansa benefited from the use of the scenario technique which is a systematic methodology that is used to predict future developments. This set the foundation for future-oriented strategy development and innovation planning. Then in phase 2, ideas were generated in a structured manner and systematic qualification processes for disruptive and highly promising ideas were established. UNITY supported the innovation process from creating business cases to developing decision gates. Some of the ideas have now been fully implemented and successfully introduced to the market. Moreover, the culture of innovation was further promoted and a uniform understanding of relevant framework conditions for the future was created across all business segments.

“Thinking in terms of alternatives and taking action based on scenarios makes it possible to recognize and tackle tomorrow‘s challenges now. Together with UNITY, we were able to achieve this for four business segments and we have set a solid foundation for our future innovation work in the Group.”