Today, even the most successful businesses face unprecedented challenges in sustaining their competitive edge. In a fast-paced and complex political, social, and environmental ecosystem, disruptive innovation is a necessity.

How to leverage uncertainty and turn it into competitive advantage?

Tomorrow, the uncertainties of today will be the business realities of entire industries. Together with our clients, we create future businesses that capitalise on the multiple challenges that lie ahead. Since being innovative is easier said than done, we closely support our clients to identify and implement the best way forward. In the end, organisations and their culture create the environment in which ideas grow, become products and services – and are ultimately rewarded with superior market success.

What is your next big thing?

Innovative business models, products and services emerge from structured processes. We support our clients in reinventing themselves around organisations and processes geared towards thinking and working differently. We deploy a tested innovation toolkit including the proven Innovation Cell™ approach to craft your next big thing in a joint effort.

How will you stay one step ahead of your competitors?

We know that maintaining competitiveness requires many factors, and the market’s competitive intensity is changing more rapidly today than ever before. We work with you to understand your industry, markets and products; using tried and tested strategic frameworks we steer you through a product-led transformation process. On this journey we take a holistic view of your enterprise including triple bottom-line impact, supported by expert technical capabilities.

How can we really do it?

Fully invested in your future success, our team collaborates with you to create tailored step-by-step actions that will bring your organisation along for the journey. With a strong implementation focus we get the job done, whatever it takes. We help clients deliver new products, enter new markets and implement new business models in the most pragmatic way, across numerous industrial sectors.

Accelerate your time-to-market to world-class levels.

Fulfilling customer requirements with differentiated products quickly is a key success factor in all industries. Four areas are critical to achieving this:

1. Accelerated development cycles with streamlined and efficient R&D processes to significantly reduce development time

2. Rapid innovation implementation enabling quicker iteration and introduction of innovations into the market

3. Efficiency in problem solving and decision making

4. Optimised resource allocation, ensuring your researchers and engineers are working on where they have the most impact on speed and innovation

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the way products are developed.

Researchers, product managers, and developers are experiencing a revolution in their work processes due to artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI. These tools enhance engineering efficiency, enable novel applications of generative design principles, and leverage vast product data.They assist in requirement setting, balancing product attributes, and simulating design outcomes without physical prototypes. AI toolsets automate the generation of design variations in modular product structures and facilitate rapid virtualization of prototypes with automated test case generation.H&Z has over 120 experts in digitisation and has supported many clients in using AI and Machine Learning (ML) to revolutionize the way they operate. Let us know if you are interested in a demo.

Strengthen product portfolio and innovative strength

The reasons are usually obvious: technologically demanding products, evolved architectures, a large, complex installed base. In contrast, it often remains hidden in everyday life how the causes can be quickly remedied. Making products less technological? Hardly. Rebuild the evolved architecture, reduce the technical debt? Hardly worth paying for. Reduce complexity in the installed base? You have obligations to the customer. Unfortunately, there is no secret recipe, but there are ways in which large and small organisations can breathe again and make the most of their innovative power. Together we find the right way out of these blockades. The special thing about our approach: We do this together with the employees. It's hard to believe, but: This is fun - for the decision-makers, the staff and for us.

Product Life Cycle Analysis

To ensure that the efforts are worthwhile even in the short term, we look at the product life cycle as a whole and ensure that the company shines in the medium and long term. In addition, we look at the areas within the product lifecycle - concept, development, portfolio management, maintenance, etc. - in order to solve existing problems. Is there a vicious cycle of firefighting and building up technical debt that we need to break? Are there one or more root causes that need to be addressed? We identify the root causes and set the course for the future.

Empowering OEMs and Suppliers with Modular Solutions

Companies in automotive and other industries, need to think smarter about their product portfolios. It is no longer operationally or commercially feasible to develop products ground up to meet every niche segment, but the breadth of competition means that any customer that isn't addressed will be addressed by a competitor product. We support companies in developing and implementing modular systems and platforms that exceed customer requirements, at the right cost and time to market.

Enhancing Efficiency Through Modularity and Standardisation

The concept of complexity reduction, modularity, and standardization often presents a struggle for companies. The recent history of industrial production has seen a rapid increase in product complexity, driven by dynamic changes in consumer choice. The levels of complexity driven by these heterogeneous products impact all steps of the value chain – product development, engineering, manufacturing, procurement – with concomitant impacts on costs and time to market. The “one product” for “one market segment” approach is no longer fit for purpose. Rationalising portfolios and eliminating duplication and complexity are essential for companies in the automotive and other industries, yet they must achieve this without a tangible impact on customer choice or brand characteristics.

We have a deep understanding of the technical and commercial tradeoffs required to define winning approaches to modularity and standardisation. With our support, OEM and supplier clients have been able to develop hardware and software platform concepts that eliminate duplication, reduce engineering complexity and cost – while maintaining core brand attributes.