We drive innovative strength and operational excellence

Machinery and Plant Engineering

The main challenge in mechanical and plant engineering is to deliver customized solutions in ever shorter timeframes at minimum cost -- often under increasing competitive pressure. At the same time, classic mechanical and plant engineering products are now often regarded by customers as basic capabilities. This means that innovative strength and the ability to change are crucial to success in your industry. If you succeed in combining leadership in technology and cost, you can increase your sales enormously. Particularly successful mechanical and plant engineering companies are characterized by one or more of the following ten success patterns:

UNITY knows the challenges of the industry, and the success factors in the areas of market, product and process. For over 25 years, machinery and plant manufacturers of all sizes have benefited from our expertise.

We support you in improving your product portfolio and your market positioning. Together, we will expand your competitive edge by increasing your innovative strength and operational excellence. In addition to our distinctive industry expertise, you benefit from our comprehensive range of services, which are targeted to your individual situation. From product development to operational excellence, IP issues and innovation through to customer experience -- take advantage of our know-how and our methodological and implementation expertise!

Consulting Services for Machinery and Plant Engineering

Market Focus

Export and Internationalization: In order to be able to finance innovation and further growth, expanding sales markets through internationalization is a key success factor.

Data-based market development: Particularly in highly competitive sales markets, incoming orders can be increased enormously by identifying potential customers at an early stage.

Distinct service business: Declining profitability in the core business can be offset by aftersales services. Services via the spare parts business also generate additional income.

Protection against new competitors: The core business is secured through comprehensive branding. The company also protects itself against new competitors with low-cost (entry-level) solutions and very short delivery times.

Digital Customer Experience

Service Business

Product Focus

Modular Solutions: With modular solutions, customer-specific requirements are mapped using configurable standards. This allows the delivery volume to be increased quickly and easily.

Software and Electronics Expertise: Increasingly, software-based services are coming into focus as products in their own right. The customer's value experience is increasingly characterized by the software.

Digital Products: Digital products and digital services, in terms of software-based services relating to machines and systems, are becoming increasingly important as additional revenue generators, but require extensive changes in the service organizations or even the establishment of separate business units.

Modularization

Product Lifecycle Management

Digital Twin

Service Business

Process Focus

Cross-domain Product Development: The intelligent integration of mechanics, control engineering, software and, if necessary, other technologies through efficient product development processes is essential to provide mechatronic products efficiently in terms of a 'system as a component of systems'. Using systems engineering methods, it is possible to provide leading solutions for markets, products and processes.

Operative Excellence: In addition to marketable manufacturing costs, the market leaders in their sectors set themselves apart by their disproportionately high-level of productivity in terms of overhead costs. This usually goes hand in hand with a good balance of standardization and customer-specific solution expertise. This enables them to achieve adequate corporate profitability even when prices are falling.

Integration expertise: When solutions need to be integrated into complex environments, technical integration expertise is a decisive competitive advantage. This ability secures and increases the sales of individual machines and components.

Systems Engineering

Operational Excellence

Project Handling System

Value Chain Strategy

What our customers in Machinery and Plant Engineering say about us

“This project was important for our profitability. We were able to maintain our day-to-day business and complete the project at the same time – and my team kept their spirits up. The profitability of my business area for components has been increased tremendously and we are prepared for the future: we are introducing optimizations to our range of products much faster.”

Heinrich Steinbrecher

Managing Partner

Bürener Maschinenfabrik GmbH

“I strongly believe lean management can set the foundation for good business performance in a dynamic market environment as in China. The UNITY team successfully motivated our lean agents and our management team to identify improvement potentials and develop an implementation plan. We are very pleased to see that all of the initiated actions are being managed by lean agents now and that all of our employees are participating in them.”

Markus Clement

Managing Director

EMAG Taicang

Project Stories in Machinery and Plant Engineering

Development of Roadmap 2020

Industrie 4.0 Implementation

Initial Situation and Project Targets

As a leader of technology and innovation, Lufthansa Technik (LHT) discussed the specific meaning of Industrie 4.0 to their company as a provider of maintenance, repair, and overhaul services (MRO) early on. The goal of this project with UNITY is to drive their implementation of MRO 4.0 forward. In order to meet the management’s high expectations, the focus is placed on rapid implementation and prompt achievement of initial successes. Furthermore, UNITY is responsible for managing the MRO 4.0 program using a combination of smaller, faster projects and larger, more comprehensive projects.

UNITY’s expertise was utilized to develop end-to-end processes in production, for which a comprehensive Roadmap 2020 was created that consists of specific implementation projects in the following four dimensions: “networking,” “equipment,” “process, products, components,” as well as “organization, staff.” The consultants function as the main point of contact of overall program management, and as interdivisional coordinators in order to drive projects forward with the individual project leaders. In addition to breaking the activities down into manageable parts, another key success factor is the rapid acceptance of planned innovations on the shop floor.

One of the implementation projects aims to create transparency in the requirements and the availability of ground support equipment (GSE), as well as establish new processes for supplying equipment. Thus, GSE, service staff and coordinators will all be networked together. For example, by utilizing additional sensors, a ground power unit will be able to automatically request refueling services, should it not have enough diesel fuel to fulfill the subsequent order. Overall, this project will be a blueprint for the coordination of equipment across all LHT locations worldwide.

“UNITY has helped us decisively in making the topic of Industrie 4.0 tangible for MRO operations. With the Industrie 4.0 expertise of UNITY consultants we were able to translate our ambitious goals into prototypes and transferable functional models. The core elements of the project are systematic networking in production, key figure-optimized resource management, and the successive raising of process maturity. UNITY, as the 'advocate of the client', helped validate our requirements for the corresponding tracking technologies and IoT platforms.”