The factory of the future is powered by digitization and fuels sustainability. We help our manufacturing clients navigate a shifting landscape of supply chains, technologies, and talent to make the products the world demands in the ways the planet needs.
New technologies have upended industrial production. As a result, manufacturers are turning toward factories of the future. But they must address critical questions about just which manufacturing technologies, structures, and processes to embrace, what they will manufacture, and where and how they will manufacture it. Our manufacturing consulting experts help clients make the decisions that shape countless conditions: environmental footprint and sustainability, cost profile, exposure to risks, workforce requirements, customer targeting, and ultimate profitability.
Our manufacturing consulting experts coach and enable our clients on strategic and operational initiatives, helping them innovate and digitize their shop floors—where value is created. Our experts, backed by advanced data and analytics and a dedicated engineering team, work with clients to cut through complexity and achieve successful manufacturing transformations.
Our manufacturing consulting focuses our clients on three essential guiding questions:
Your product, product lines, and underlying components establish your manufacturing strategy. This includes what you make in-house versus buy through a supplier, as well as your supply chain and how you optimize it along with your manufacturing operations. BCG brings expertise in manufacturing strategy and organization, risk management, sustainable operations, and make-or-buy decisions.
You must decide not only in which locations your plants and distribution centers sit, but also how they’re optimized for such particulars as regulations, logistics, taxes, and duties. Our manufacturing consulting experts help clients make the best decisions using our advanced production network optimization tools like SNOW AI and the Global Manufacturing Cost-Competitiveness Index.
BCG helps evaluate your supply chain by viewing your global manufacturing operations through an integrated lens—ensuring everything from your lean manufacturing practices to your use of advanced robotics performs at a world-class level. We help you envision and build factories of the future that incorporate Industry 4.0 technologies, maintenance and production engineering strategies, logistics capabilities, lean production systems, and quality processes.
BCG’s manufacturing consulting clients enjoy access to a broad range of resources, including our Innovation Center for Operations. The following are among the tools and offerings we deliver.
To pioneer a digital transformation of its operations, global automotive supplier Forvia partnered with BCG to define its ambition and implement digital use cases. In this video, Jean-Paul Michel, EVP of Interiors for Faurecia, and BCG’s Alex Miannay reveal how Forvia Interiors is embarking on its mission to become the industry leader in material flow management, transformation, and assembly.
A pharmaceutical company asked BCG to optimize its production network. When we identified the best locations for offshore outsourcing, the company was able to recapture up to 55% of the cost of goods sold.
An industrial goods company was experiencing an unwanted byproduct of its success: an unwieldy production system and, by extension, unclear KPIs. BCG designed and then implemented a system to apply standardized metrics across plants, paving the way for $30 million in savings.
For an automotive company, BCG focused on the question of whether the company should make or buy certain products. To arrive at a comprehensive answer, we evaluated relative costs and the strategic importance of parts and processes, modeled external prices, and then compared those projections with in-house prices. As a result, our client slashed expenses within its production network by $120 million per year.
BCG partnered with Grundfos, a water pump manufacturer, to launch a series of DEI initiatives among its 20,000 employees, including gender diversity in manufacturing, LGBTQ+ inclusion, mentoring programs, and more. Within one year, Grundfos became an industry leader in DEI by making changes to its hiring and advancement practice, including increasing the percentage of workers who have a disability to 3% and boosting the percentage of women in senior management to 16%.
BCG was named a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Operations Improvement Consulting Services 2023–2024 Vendor Assessment due to our focus on fast, measurable impact through execution and more.
Supply Chain AI takes a holistic approach to transforming a company’s supply chain, from strategy and design through integrated planning and optimized execution. Backed by a unique set of AI solutions from BCG X, we enhance seven key supply chain capabilities while developing the plans, processes, skills, and culture that fuel and accelerate transformation.
Powered by cutting-edge machine learning and optimization models, BCG X's proprietary advanced analytics solution solves end-to-end supply chain optimization problems easier, faster, and more cost-effectively.
Manufacturing AI by BCG X’s integrated offering for AI-powered manufacturing transformations brings together BCG’s operations know-how and BCG X’s advanced analytics capabilities to unlock value at scale on the shop floor, enabling a 10% to 25% productivity improvement.
BCG-WEF Project: AI-Powered Industrial Operations
How can manufacturers harness the latest technologies to optimize for increased productivity, improved sustainability, greater resilience, and a stronger workforce?
BCG’s Daniel Kuepper explains how manufacturers can strategically approach cost management to bring about the factory of the future while reducing costs in the present.
The root cause of the problem lies not with technology but with how and where companies are applying it.
