Commercial-Vehicle Technology: Mastering the Growing Complexity

The commercial-vehicle industry is characterized by high complexity.

Government regulations, international norms, and customers’ desire for individual products have a direct impact on vehicles, production processes, and the supply chains of manufacturers and suppliers.

Combined with the major trends of our time (including digital transformation, globalization, resource shortages, and climate change), what results is a competitive and volatile market environment marked by cyclical fluctuation and increasing individualization of products.

To get a handle on this complexity, manufacturers and their suppliers are dependent on three capabilities above all: high production efficiency, a well-designed supply chain, and the ability to react quickly and flexibly to market changes. These capabilities are the key to overcoming the increasing variability in the commercial-vehicle industry, now and in the future.

What levers do companies have access to?

There are effective levers for all three areas, and companies use them to improve their competitive position:

 

• Production and assembly: Companies active on an international scale are confronted with local product requirements. Such requirements are difficult to meet in classic series production. Instead, they call for modern, more flexible production concepts (e.g., market-based production lines for North America, DACH, or Asia) in connection with development methods such as design to cost. This is how providers satisfy the desires of their customers without compromising on efficiency and costs.
• Production and supply chains: Like in the automotive industry, businesses in the commercial-vehicle sector are to a large degree dependent on the performance of their suppliers. Using well-structured supplier management in connection with clean quality management, we can significantly increase efficiency throughout the supply chain. This improves the quality of the manufactured products just as much as it does the provider’s delivery capacity.
• Responsiveness: Another key role is played by digital transformation. Used in a targeted manner, digital technologies can significantly boost the responsiveness of a company. For example, it is usually advisable to increase transparency throughout value chains. By identifying and visualizing informative performance indicators, companies can react more quickly to irregularities and fix problems long before they escalate. This exponentially increases the certainty in planning.

Implement individual concepts sustainably

Truck makers as well as manufacturers of trailers, attachments, and accessories have numbered among Ingenics’ clients for years. Because of this, we know the factors that the industry must deal with and the levers that can be used to make lasting improvements happen.

Taking a look at your situation, we develop a concept together with you that meets your individual requirements. The methods we use for this vary from case to case. Efficiency improvement measures, e.g., with the help of lean management and targeted use of digital technologies, are very much conceivable, as are support services in the areas of logistics planning, supplier management, and factory planning.