Automotive & Assembly

Our world is changing. Trends like e-mobility, autonomous vehicles, and car sharing are reshaping the global automotive industry. We bring more than a century of experience to today’s complex integration challenges. We partner from the very first stages of the design process to come up with value-creating assembly solutions. Our expertise encompasses design, development, prototyping, and manufacturing, positioning us to support you throughout your project.

How do we help clients?

Automotive OEMs

We help clients strengthen their financial performance by improving all aspects of their value chain, from brand strategy to product development and supply-chain optimization to marketing and sales.

The automotive industry’s most pressing challenges today are caused by technology trends that are disrupting the market: advances in mobility, autonomous driving, electrification, and connectivity.

Automakers need to make strategic moves now to shape the industry’s evolution, search for profitable growth and position themselves to expand into the booming vehicle markets across Asia—all while contending with an environment that is both volatile and uncertain.

Doing this well requires incumbent players to make fundamental and strategically vetted decisions now. To help our clients address these challenges, we can help them prepare for the uncertainty, reshaping their value proposition and adjusting their organization where required.

We can additionally provide them with unique insights and expertise related to market entry and network expansion, the success factors required for productive joint ventures and manufacturing expertise. In addition, we have on-the-ground experts who understand the local automotive markets. Our product development excellence program and supply-chain analysis can provide breakthroughs in efficiency and cost management, no matter the length or complexity of the supply chain. We also help OEMs design, develop, and produce vehicles, working side-by-side with development teams to arrive at a cost point that meets both budgetary and performance targets.

Fijishi’s global reach is a distinctive asset, our experts offer unequaled customer and regulatory insights into local markets. When this local perspective is combined with deep expertise in mechanical engineering, electronics, chemistry, and related fields, we can deliver unique and lasting impact for automotive OEMs.

Commercial Vehicles

We help commercial-vehicle manufacturers serve markets around the world, tailor products to local requirements, and develop global production networks that can adapt to change.

The truck industry is global in nature, and automotive OEMs strive to master a host of unique challenges. We help them succeed and enter new markets. Aside from questions of which markets to enter, manufacturers must also decide on the level of customization and localization that will be offered on products in each market. We help design platform strategies, modularization strategies, market-entry strategies, and flexible business models that reduce uncertainty and position truck makers and bus companies for success.

Another challenge for OEMs is innovating powertrain technologies so that heavy vehicles comply with tightening emissions standards around the world. We have expertise in both the R&D strategies and technologies that empower product evolution.

Given the highly cyclical nature of sales in the heavy-vehicle market, companies also seek alternative sources of revenue. We help design the value-added-services strategies and advanced business models that move companies beyond the volatility of the business cycle. We can also help define joint-venture strategies for markets where that is a requirement for entry.

With more than 100 consultants whose expertise ranges from mechanical engineering to production planning and product design in the heavy-vehicles market, and with local experts on the regulatory and business climates of specific markets, we can address any concern a truck or bus company might have. We also have proprietary tools, such as our annually updated global-profit-pool model for the truck market or our granular understanding of the economics behind alternative powertrains for the bus market in Europe.

Machinery

We work with leading international machinery companies to make distinctive, lasting, and substantial performance improvements.

The machinery industry is quite diverse and fragmented, and many of our clients face similar challenges. They typically operate in the lower-volume business-to-business market, yet maintain a truly global footprint. As they target high-growth markets around the world, they are facing a new wave of competition from emerging-market countries, and they need agile business and operational models to manage the volatility in market demand.

In order to effectively serve our clients, we have built a committed group of experts focused purely on machinery topics. For example, to help these companies deepen their core competencies of great engineering and design of distinctive products, we work with them to develop finely tuned strategies and detailed customer insights.

Many of our insights have been drawn from high-volume industries, but we have customized each to the environment and the challenges faced by machinery clients. We blend this industry perspective with time-tested business acumen to deliver superior results.

Automotive Suppliers

We help clients improve productivity, strengthen innovation, and compete globally in a variety of markets.

The changes currently taking place in the automotive-supplier industry from the need to go global to the emergence of new competitors in low-cost countries have increased business uncertainties and turned decision making that used to be straightforward into a much more complicated process.

From new lighting technologies to breakthrough powertrain solutions, suppliers manage the frontlines in an attempt to find superior solutions for their OEM customers. They're also responsible for roughly 70 percent of the industry's costs, placing them front and center in the continuing effort to boost productivity.

We help supplier companies in all the steps of the value chain. Our projects range from growth strategies and business-plan development to R&D topics such as material-cost optimization and supply-chain optimization, as well as sales and aftermarket processes. We help clients reduce capital intensity, optimize and standardize their specifications, and refine their approach to innovation and R&D investment. We also have perspectives on globalizing and localizing products, talent management, and corporate-finance topics.

With dozens of dedicated consultants and experts around the world, we can address any question a supplier may have. In addition, we work with regional industry groups to maintain a cutting-edge perspective on the issues that matter most. And we invest in knowledge development to address key industry concerns. We apply a holistic view of the industry, assess aftermarket trends, and project potential scenarios for post sales business.

Emerging Markets

We help OEMs, suppliers, and related companies deal with the complexity of entering and operating in emerging markets around the globe.

Over the last 16 years, automotive sales in emerging markets, such as China, India, and Brazil, have proved not only resilient but also, until recently, more robust than many experts would have predicted. China, for example, is the largest market as measured by vehicle sales, and—until 2015—it has also been the fastest-growing market in the world. Along with the sales increases comes a rapidly changing market landscape and evolving consumer demands.

As a global firm with dedicated local auto experts, we have helped clients in several areas:

constructing a winning 10-year growth strategy
developing a compelling China-specific car portfolio via localization and China R&D
implementing stringent quality-improvement processes
driving a multi-year frontline sales transformation to improve customer satisfaction and sales performance

China
In the coming decade, the majority of the growth in the Chinese market will come from lower-tier cities. Consumer patterns also differ across regional clusters; we help clients improve their consumer-insight capabilities, innovate their digital-marketing tools, and systematically grow and optimize their dealer network.

India
In India, the challenges are quite different. The subcontinent pioneered the concept of ultra-low-cost cars, and the low-cost customer segment remains a hearty subset of the burgeoning auto marketplace there. Small cars form more than 75 percent of the total market. We help clients localize products, redesign supply chains, and adjust pricing to meet that demand.

Other global trends, such as electric vehicles (EVs), take on a different character in India: the focus there is on two-wheeled, not four-wheeled vehicles, and lower excise taxes are boosting this growing market. However, with excise duties of 4 percent on EVs compared with 10- to 22 percent on conventional cars, there is also real potential for cycles, cars, and trucks in India’s growing EV market. We help automakers enter this market with the right products aimed at the most appealing customer segments.

Brazil
In a market like Brazil, localization is key due to both legislation and consumers’ requiring “tropicalized” products, with a good mix of quality and price. Our design-to-value work helps companies optimize cost/value tradeoffs and achieve attractive profit margins.

Questions of where to play in Brazil are also important; some cities there are seeing faster growth in auto sales than their peers in China, whereas others experience auto-sales growth that is slower than in major European cities. With local-market expertise and international experience, we can help automotive companies identify pockets of growth, build a stronghold in those areas, and tap into the vast potential in the developing world.