Machinery and Industrial Automation Consulting Services

Industrial Goods

In the postpandemic world, manufacturers of machinery and industrial automation need to reinforce resilience so they can successfully navigate economic turbulence, digitize their operations and services, and develop product offerings to address environmental sustainability and green technologies.

Companies focused on manufacturing machinery, components, and equipment for industrial automation have two critical roles to play over the next few years: First, their products enable other industrial companies to transform into highly automated, digital, and sustainable businesses. Second, they need to understand and successfully harness the top trends transforming the machinery and industrial-automation industry if they want to succeed in the decade ahead. BCG’s machinery and industrial-automation consultants collaborate with leaders at these organizations to explore:

Digital Disruption. How can machinery and industrial-automation companies monetize the vast volumes of data that digital technologies generate and capture? How can digital offerings and services generate additional revenue streams to help these companies compete against software giants and telcos? How do traditional companies make the leap from manufacturing hardware-centric equipment to delivering fully digitized products and services? (See the exhibit below.)

The Challenging Future of Automation. How will advances in automation technologies erase the boundaries between information and operational systems? How can industrial-automation companies navigate the cyber-physical hybrid networks that combine new technologies such as the industrial Internet of Things, machine learning, and cloud or edge computing? What are the implications for product positioning and business models? And how can machinery and industrial-automation companies best set their game plans to capture the value pools emerging from these new ecosystems?

Winning Strategies in Machinery and Industrial Automation

BCG’s machinery and industrial-automation consulting offerings include a comprehensive suite of advisory services and tools. With these, we help our clients navigate the challenges and address the opportunities emerging in the machinery and industrial-automation industry landscape.

BCG’s Broad and Deep Expertise

Our global team comprises more than 200 core senior consultants and experts who possess in-depth experience across the entire value chain of machinery and industrial automation—including general machinery and components, digital machinery, industry-specific machinery, industrial automation and controls, and building technology.

Our machinery and industrial-automation consultants are supported by researchers, analysts, and experts in 90 offices around the world, as well as a cadre of senior advisors—former C-suite executives from leading companies in this industry and other adjacent segments.

Since 2015, we have supported more than 1,400 client projects around the globe in the machinery and industrial-automation industry. In these engagements, we help our clients tackle various challenges in such areas as strategic planning, corporate development, operations, marketing and sales, and workforce planning.

BCG’s Advisory Services and Partnerships

BCG’s Center for Digital in Machinery

We bring together and combine BCG’s mastery of strategy and business management with deep expertise in engineering, industry, and technology to achieve superior results for our clients. Our partnerships with leading engineering and industry organizations, such as VDMA and RWTH Aachen University in Germany, enable us to explore the latest advances in automation and industrial technology, identify the business implications for companies, and then collaborate to pursue the most promising strategic plans and use cases.

Digital BCG

We help machinery and industrial-automation companies meet the digital transformation imperative. Our work includes setting digital priorities, digitizing the core business, inventing and investing in new sources of revenue, extracting value from data, and mastering new ways of working driven by digital. Our digital specialty businesses include BCG Digital Ventures, which supports digital business building, and BCG GAMMA, which focuses on data, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics solution design.

BCG’s M&A Support

We help investors and companies in the machinery and industrial-automation industry identify investment targets and partnerships in the fast-changing industrial-technology arena. Our experts home in on specialized segments, such as advanced robotics, autonomous vehicles, machine vision, and industrial IoT.

BCG’s Selected State-of-the-art Tools and Proprietary Data

BCG’s Digital & Excellence Services Benchmark

The tool helps companies assess their digital maturity. The eight criteria include the effectiveness of field force training and support, service operations, and customer incident handling.

Discover where to improve—and how you stack up against your peers.

Our Digital Acceleration Index (DAI)

BCG's DAI enables decision makers in a company to rate the enterprise’s effectiveness on digital initiatives under way. Informed by survey responses, companies can set their digital ambition, prioritize digital projects, identify capability gaps, and build a roadmap to the future.

Choose from three levels of DAI analysis and planning.

BCG’s Climate Readiness Toolkit

This toolkit includes climate scenario modeling. It positions clients to reduce emissions, bolster resilience in the face of climate-related risks, foster supply chain sustainability, and design a low-carbon portfolio.

Capitalize on emerging opportunities, such as green tech for sustainability.