Amid new manufacturing technologies, advanced robotics, and other changes, companies still face the essential questions: What should we make? Where should we make it—and how? BCG’s manufacturing consulting teams help companies find the right answers.
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New technologies have upended industrial production. As a result, smart manufacturers are turning toward factories of the future. But they must address critical challenges about just which manufacturing technologies, structures, and processes to embrace. We help our clients make the decisions that shape countless conditions: your environmental footprint and sustainability, cost profile, exposure to risks, workforce requirements, customer targeting, and ultimate profitability.
BCG’s manufacturing consulting focuses our clients on three essential and guiding questions.
Your product, product lines, and underlying components establish your strategic direction. 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 and sustainability, 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. We help clients make the best decisions using our advanced production network optimization tools and 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 and Global Operations Centers. The following are among the tools and offerings we deliver.
For a car company, BCG focused on the what question: Should the company 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.
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, thus paving the way for $30 million in savings.
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