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The rules of the game have changed. Those who want to be at the head of the pack have to keep moving! That’s because the environment we’re familiar with is changing at breakneck speed. New, agile competitors are tackling existing business models at a rapid pace – in almost all sectors. This is the impetus behind the motto for this year’s BestPractice Day, taking place in Darmstadt from July 3 to 4, 2018: “Learn. Lead. Design the Change.”

More than 80% of companies in the automotive industry believe that improving their processes and organizational structures is critical to their future success, according to a current study conducted by the corporate consulting firm Staufen. Converting to electromobility is especially fraught with challenges which cannot be addressed using traditional approaches. Currently OEMs are focused primarily on integration into existing production systems.

Even global market leaders often complain that their innovations require too much time to attain market maturity: approximately 60 percent of companies took a critical stance when surveyed on the time to market for new products. As a rule, money is not the issue. Eight out of ten companies stated that they were well positioned financially with respect to research and development. On the contrary, structural problems are what delay innovation. These are the results of a current study carried out for Staufen consultancy; more than 200 German companies counting among the global market leaders in their field were surveyed.

Three quarters of German industrial companies are not convinced about predictive maintenance. Their performance capability is not sufficient or, at least still upgradeable. Only 6 percent currently see applying predictive maintenance on the basis of process and machine data as being highly beneficial. These are the results of what is now the fourth German Industry 4.0 Index. Approximately 400 German industrial companies were surveyed on behalf of Staufen Consultancy.

Digital transformation, the platform economy, artificial intelligence – in 2018, these topics will remain at the very top of the agenda for many companies. But anyone who thinks that they have properly done their homework by simply creating a list of technical specifications is sorely mistaken. For quite some time now, the greatest challenge has not been implementing new technologies: it has been dealing with the dynamics underlying the changes ahead. Helping businesses and their employees adjust their way of thinking to this kind of acceleration is going to be management’s number-one task.

The unmistakable trend towards customization is still going strong in the field of production technology. A fifth of German manufacturing companies are already creating a batch size of 1 at the costs of serial production. Within no more than five years, another 28% want to have achieved this goal, with another 14% to follow suit in the next ten years. These findings emerged in the course of the German Industry 4.0 Index, which was recently released for the fourth time. Some 400 manufacturing companies in Germany were surveyed by Staufen corporate consultants.

For 54 percent of German businesses, the creative process is still very much unstructured. These are the results of the “Success in Transformation” study carried out by Staufen Consultancy. As a part of the study, more than 650 top management executives of German companies were surveyed. Putting your faith in creative chaos has its consequences: Unnecessarily long development times and high costs. Market analysis shows, with structured development processes more new products reach market maturity faster.

Vom kleinen Industrieroboter „Horst“, über professionelle Livestreaming-Software via Smartphone bis zu besonders kleinen thermoelektrischen Generatoren und Prothesen aus dem 3D-Drucker – elf innovative Ideen aus den Bereichen Robotik, IT und Medizintechnik machten im elften Jahr der Gründerinitiative WECONOMY das Rennen. Am vergangenen Wochenende lösten die Start-ups den ersten Teil ihres Gewinns ein und entwickelten beim WECONOMY-Wochenende bei der Landesbank Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart in intensiven Einzelgesprächen mit Managern und Persönlichkeiten der deutschen Wirtschaft ihre Geschäftsidee weiter.

Not even half of the German companies that have already actively adopted Industry 4 is capitalizing on industrial internet platforms to distribute or support their value chain. And every fourth company is actually ruling out making use of this technology in the near future. These are the findings of Staufen Consultancy’s “German Industry 4.0 Index”. For the study, Staufen Digital Neonex experts surveyed approximately 400 industries in Germany.