Aligning Strategy with Performance for Business Excellence

Identifying future-proof business models and adding value

Let's take a look at current trends: Circular Economy, digitalization or resilience are profound developments. They are all happening at the same time and have an impact on the industry, customers, suppliers and thus the entire company. Often there is no time in everyday life to keep an eye on all the changes and to make accurate decisions. Which business model positions you for the future? How do you create added value? Which trend should you react to?
 

Support and monitoring of the strategy process

To develop the right strategy, we provide our clients with a comprehensive overview of their own maturity level and the developments around them. We put them in a position to consciously make good decisions. Decision makers bring the entrepreneurial instinct, we bring our deep industry knowledge and our comprehensive know-how about the impact of all developments on companies. From this, together we develop bold goals and concrete steps that actually get the organization there. Not a rigid plan that follows a blueprint, but a flexible strategy that is multi-layered, intelligent and individual - just like the company itself.
No matter what the path looks like, one thing matters most to us: implementability. This is the difficult but crucial part of any strategy process. That's why we don't leave our clients with a strategy concept on paper but support them and their organization on site throughout the entire process – with head, heart and hand.

Added value through organic growth

What opportunities have already been exploited in digital sales? Is a product falling short of expectations? Are there opportunities to focus the product portfolio? Your organization has certainly answered many of these questions. For us, customer-centric approaches that are in harmony with your strengths have proven most effective. The digitalization of B2B sales is increasingly one of the driving forces.
 

Identifying sustainable growth potential

Every sustainable growth is based on individual strengths. Using our in-depth industry knowledge and proven analysis tools, we show our clients where their organization stands and where the competition is heading. On this basis, we work together to identify concrete growth potential and help the company to actually realize it. Whether it is the development of digital sales, the integration of platform business models and new markets or a classic performance improvement - we deliver tailor-made growth projects.

Support along the entire transaction process

We offer a range of tailored services to support our clients’ investment activities. Our team helps you to develop a comprehensive M&A strategy and evaluate target market as well as provide deal support, including target identification through comprehensive market screening. Once a potential target has been identified, we offer in-depth Commercial and Operational Due Diligence to help our clients make informed investment decisions. After the acquisition, our expertise in post-merger integrations helps you to realize synergies and perform value creation programs before setting up a suitable exit strategy for you.

On the sell side, we offer assistance with all critical issues surrounding the sales process - from buyer identification to the initial contact and vendor due diligence to the negotiation of the purchase price and the carve-out execution. With our extensive deal experience in the M&A business and our broad network in the transaction services industry we will find a suitable approach to any challenge.

We emphasize a dual approach—refining business structures and processes to be more adaptable while simultaneously nurturing an environment that develops your people. This ensures sustainable structural changes, maintaining organizational resilience and responsiveness, and laying the groundwork for strategic enhancements that follow. 

Refining Structures and Processes for Strategic Success

We specialize in enhancing your organizational structure and processes to support and drive your business strategy. From punctual adaptations to complete redesigns, we optimize decision-making and operational frameworks to ensure every aspect of your operations aligns with your business goals. By identifying and analyzing current processes, we pinpoint inefficiencies and design changes that empower your organization to adapt swiftly to evolving business demands. Our integrated approach combines refining structures with optimizing processes, ensuring continuous improvement and operational excellence. We involve stakeholders at every stage to guarantee successful adoption and alignment with organizational objectives. This holistic strategy fosters a dynamic and agile operational environment, enabling your company to thrive in a competitive marketplace. By strategically enabling your organizational framework, we create a cohesive and resilient system that secures long-term success and competitiveness. 

Enhancing Leadership and Organizational Culture

Building a strong organizational culture and developing effective leadership are essential for your company's long-term success. We focus on improving leadership skills and aligning talent management with your strategic goals. Our programs are designed to foster a culture of innovation and accountability, helping your leaders and teams excel. Our offer includes workshops on adaptive leadership, coaching sessions, and initiatives to promote cross-functional collaboration which helps you to create a resilient organization that can tackle future challenges and seize new opportunities. Our practical, hands-on approach ensures that your leaders are not only prepared to meet today's demands but are also equipped to drive future growth and success.

Assessment & Improvement

How mature are our operations in terms of excellence? How streamlined and interlinked are our processes? Where do we have the potential to reduce wasteful processes to maximize value-added? How flexible are we when a customer, or the market in general, needs our products or services at short notice? How well do we engage our staff through excellent leadership? Which measures do we have to solve issues arising from a skilled labour shortage? How do we distinguish between pure trends and actual benefits from digitization? 

Starting with our operations maturity check and utilizing our operational excellence levers as well as our ‘H&Z lever cookbook’, we are able to find quick fixes as well as achieve sustainable solutions that fit and function within our client's ecosystem.
 

Operational Excellence 

Which approach should we follow to best measure performance as well as speed and quality of improvements? Which KPIs do we need to have for each level of our operations? How can we maintain the new performance level? What is necessary to build continuous improvement into our company’s DNA? How do we transform and stabilize a lean organization? What training do we use to not only inform but to convince our staff? What is the best approach for our business to closely link our operations strategy with the overarching company strategy and targets? 

As an immediate follow-up after initial successes and enhancements, we support our clients with our structured approach to stabilize, enhance, and roll out improvements across their operations organization. We manage a smooth handover of a well-balanced and performing system from our experts and consultants to the client's team. 

Digital Operations 

We believe the target of digital operations needs to be the management and optimization of an organization’s business operations. We understand digitization in an operations environment as a synergetic extension of the classical lean management and operational excellence approach. In that sense, we use digital technologies and processes to automate, integrate, and further optimize existing analogous solutions or to feature new options that were unavailable unless using digital systems. As a result, digitization enriches and enlarges the operational excellence toolkit to further improve efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility. In many cases, we initially apply our Digital Readiness Check in order to create clarity on the current digitalization baseline, actual targets, and as a result, the most relevant improvement areas. In the next step, we work with the customer team to design a digitalization framework and concept which typically is quite different in terms of digitization focus from one project to another.

NWC optimization with focus on inventory right-sizing 

Which is the right level of inventory (raw material, WIP, finished goods) for our business? How can we measure and display our actuals correctly and immediately? Which system/tool should we use and how will it fit into our eco-system/IT landscape? How can we increase the booking discipline to ensure our system values are correct? Where do we have the biggest levers to improve our NWC situation as soon as possible? Which long-term developments do we need to anticipate? Which long-term improvements should we focus on? 

Our experienced NWC team uses the extensive H&Z industry branch benchmark library together with our inventory solution tool to quickly create transparency regarding the current situation in a project. Using our set of measures for inventory optimization as well as for Payables and Receivables, we generate and implement tangible solutions with the client team already in early project phases. Click here to learn more.

Sales & Operations Planning 

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is critically important for companies as it aligns an organization’s operational plan with its strategic and commercial goals, helping to ensure that the company operates cohesively and effectively. Our S&OP approach improves forecast accuracy, synchronizes sales planning, demand planning, and operational execution. As a result, S&OP enhances financial performance as production is rightsized, which reduces inventory holding costs, and further optimizes cashflow. Our S&OP team has developed a maturity check and is experienced in developing a tailor-fit concept with concrete targets and a corresponding set of KPIs. The team also establishes clear S&OP governance along with the standard meeting structure, as well as the necessary forms, templates, and IT solutions. 

Production Footprint & Network

 Optimizing the Production Footprint and Network is crucial for balancing costs, efficiency, and market responsiveness. We help clients evaluate their production environment by analyzing location, capacity, logistics, and costs to identify opportunities for consolidation, expansion, or relocation. Key considerations include aligning facilities with market demand, reducing lead times, and enhancing supply chain resilience. Our approach involves a thorough assessment of the production footprint and network to provide data-driven insights and strategic recommendations. We address critical questions: Are our facilities optimally located? How can we reduce costs while improving flexibility? How do we incorporate sustainability into our footprint strategy? 

We collaborate with clients to design and implement a tailored production footprint and network strategy, ensuring smooth transitions and alignment with business goals. This leads to improved operational efficiency, cost savings, and a stronger competitive position in the market.

But the use of industrial 3D printing, also called additive manufacturing, often raises questions at the beginning, the answers to which require appropriate expertise and application know-how. For which products in the portfolio is the change worthwhile? To what extent must the design be adapted in order to exploit the full potential of the process? How is the new manufacturing process validated? Does it make sense to have an in-house 3D printer or to involve a specialized contract manufacturer?

Additive manufacturing is redefining the supply chain

In the last few quarters, companies have learned one thing - centralized mega-factories from which the world is supplied with components or products have had their day. Decentralized, close to the customer, flexible and logistics-optimized - that's what the factories of the future should look like. "Distributed manufacturing" is the key word. It is not the product or the component that is to be shipped, but the digital data file that is sent to the factory near the customer and produced there. To achieve this, factories, but above all the manufacturing technology installed there, must be digitized. Industrial 3D printing is predestined for this. The highly flexible, tool-free manufacturing process allows fast set-up times and production ramp-ups. Small and medium batch sizes are ideal for the technology. The cost-efficient production of individualized components and products is also feasible, which is interesting for industries such as medical technology. Thus, 3D printing has the potential to redefine supply chains, to increasingly manufacture locally and to significantly increase the resilience of a supply chain. 
 

Digital inventory - reduced complexity of the supply chain

Converting a physical warehouse with large halls - with thousands of spare parts stored for years - to a digital inventory on a server is another way to become more efficient. But if you want to send data from spare parts by computer command to a 3D printer abroad at the customer's site, you have to digitize your product portfolio and structure the ordering, manufacturing, quality assurance and delivery process differently. It's a challenging project, but one that pays off because in the end the complexity of the supply chain is reduced and material, transport, storage and personnel costs are significantly lowered. Regardless of where digitization of the value chain begins, it requires smart planning for sustainable implementation. 
 

From a simple question to a strategic project

It is undisputed - the potential of additive manufacturing is enormous for many companies. But very often it is unclear how to approach such a supposedly multi-layered topic. Our answer: "Slice the elephant": Start with a manageable project, a problem that concerns your company and/or your customers. A complex part to manufacture, more customer intimacy in the development process, manufacturing spare parts for which there are no more tools or blueprints. Look for a technology partner who accompanies and supports you. In this way, you build up experience, gain trust and initial success stories that help you to initiate a comprehensive digitization of the value chain. Digital manufacturing must be positioned as a strategic topic that is embedded in the overall corporate strategy with a view to business drivers and clearly formulated goals and milestones. This requires a holistic view, which we at H&Z have been successfully bringing to our customers' digitalization projects for years. In a joint assessment, we determine the maturity level of a company and deduce at which point in the value chain the use of digital innovations makes sense. From there, we accompany our customers in the transformation to a digital organization - from the first step to the final form. 

Claim vs. reality vs. customer demand?

Sometimes, one's own ambitions on production and performance are a good reason to take a close look at end-to-end processes (E2E processes). Everyone defines success differently: Does it pay to be even faster? Can I control my materials more efficiently? Is there a lever that will make the company even happier? While for one person the goal is to prepare his own company well for the future in a changed competitive environment, the next wants to open up to a broader customer base or push ahead with modularization. We support you in identifying the bottlenecks and finding your focus.
 

Analyze and optimize processes end-to-end

From sales planning to the material flow in production and supply chain (S&OP) to the interfaces of multiple functions and locations, there is a lot of potential for efficiency and speed. To find these, we take a detailed look at the order flow with our customers in a value stream. Where we encounter bottlenecks, we make a comprehensive analysis and identify the causes.
We develop the right solutions for a company together with the involved employees and functions - so that everyone supports the path going forward. From our experience, this is the only way to sustainable improved processes. Thanks to our in-depth knowledge of the industry, we provide practical advice and best practices. That's why we accompany our clients throughout the entire process and stay with them until the goal is achieved. Together, we ensure that the result addresses your specific challenges and improves your business in the long term.