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RB Product Accelerator – 360° Product Cost Optimization
Our unique 360° approach and wealth of experience reveal potential in everything from individual parts to systems and modules to entire vehicles
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Our vision – What we promise you
Roland Berger helps clients in the automotive industry to create sustainable value over the entire lifecycle of software and hardware products. Focusing on product cost optimization and serving as a product accelerator, we do this in three ways as part of our 360° approach:
- Opportunity generation is the first way.
Working with automotive OEMs, we combine both the vehicle and category views, adding in proven expertise and market knowledge down to the level of individual parts and software solutions. We adopt a customized 360° approach, generating opportunities to achieve direct material cost reductions. - Organizational mobilization gets your people on board.
Our experienced team of experts translates identified opportunities into a change story which everyone in your organization can buy into. A smart project management office (PMO) uses consistent messaging around this story to foster seamless cross-functional collaboration and drive measurable progress. - Organizational anchoring finishes our job and enables yours.
This simply means that by the time our consultants are gone, positive change has long since been anchored throughout your organization. Our comprehensive 'RB academy' approach effectively hands over the baton to your people to keep change moving. We pride ourselves on enabling teams for the "time after Roland Berger"!
Our unique 360° product approach – How we deliver on this promise
"We firmly believe that the 360° product approach covering early phase to series production is the strategic and practical way to help our clients resolve various challenges."
At Roland Berger, 360° means exactly what it says: We cover all hardware and software development topics across the automotive industry’s entire product development cycle. This involves defining, evaluating and benchmarking change levers from the technical, process, commercial and sustainable perspectives. Drawing on a wealth of automotive expertise and hands-on experience, our customized analysis cuts through complexity and identifies cost reduction potential in all functions, including material, logistics, development, production and engineering costs. These specific levers can then be adjusted flexibly to match the individual requirements of each project phase:
Early phase: Development of competitive product concepts by ensuring the right end-to-end, technology-to-cost ratio
Concept phase: Industrialization of the concept within the prescribed time, quality and cost framework
Series phase: Optimization of product costs down to the level of each individual part
"The trick with a 360° approach is to drill down into every fine detail but never lose sight of the big picture. That way, the whole really does become more than the sum of the parts."
Shifting your organization into gear with immersive 360° workshops
360° workshops are our proven engine to generate opportunities across your organization. Before each workshop, the experts at our subsidiary POLARIXPARTNER perform a complete vehicle teardown and systematically source commercial benchmarks for every part or system that is in focus. Additional input is retrieved from our constantly expanding RB lever library, from vehicle comparisons and from the industry-leading car cost clinics we organize. And the input we need from you? That’s simple: an open mind and top management support.
Each opportunity generation workshop is conducted in a cross-functional setting with your top internal experts and the active participation of our expert consultants. In everything from software development to in-vehicle connectivity, from conventional parts to automotive app development and next-generation innovations, we focus on the key elements and main cost drivers, engaging in a structured discussion of all the methodically prepared input and analyses.
The outcome is a list of opportunities and ideas from which we distill a short list of top opportunities – those that demonstrate strong financial potential and can readily be implemented using standard operating procedures. In addition, we draw up a long list of further opportunities, plus a transparent roadmap stating who is responsible for validating and fleshing out each idea.
Our track record – Case studies (excerpt)
Roland Berger and POLARIXPARTNER have successfully completed numerous 360° product cost optimization projects. We have made it our habit to provide clients with holistic, hands-on solutions that dig beneath the surface and drill down into the granular details of our clients’ automotive software and hardware products. A selection of case studies involving automotive OEMs and suppliers is linked below. This small sample – representative of very many successful reference projects conducted industry-wide – testifies to the consistent success of our approach in practice.
"Identifying potential savings is only half the job. Enabling the client’s organization to maintain momentum when we have packed up and gone is the most important part – a part we excel in."
Stay connected with the Roland Berger and POLARIXPARTNER community
Experts from Roland Berger and our subsidiary POLARIXPARTNER have been working hand in hand since 2022 to accelerate 360° product cost optimization in the automotive space. They have broadened this practice over time, helping key players in the automotive sector to create and optimize their product journeys. For both us and our clients, the results have been inspiring as we work together to generate opportunities and optimize product costs at every stage.
Roland Berger works with top level executives in various industries, helping them decipher cutting-edge digital topics and equipping them with the skills and capabilities they need to succeed in the digital world. We inspire leaders and drive the transformation of organizations’ cultural perspectives.
POLARIXPARTNER, a Roland Berger Group company, specializes in the technical benchmarking of all automotive systems, performing bottom-up target cost analyses and identifying potential savings on the technical, commercial, process and supply chain levels. Drawing on an extensive database of actionable cost reduction levers, we deliver exclusive insights that unlock measurable results for automotive industry clients. More than 100 clients worldwide already.
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