Optimization of product development to establish a best-in-class R&D setup within the global automotive headlamp industry

The company completed another record year in 2018, increasing its consolidated group sales to over 1.34 billion euros. At the same time, the number of employees in the Group grew to just under 9,700 at the end of 2018.

In order to remain at the forefront of technical development and ensure long-term competitiveness, ZKW faces the challenge of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of product development despite growing product complexity.

To accomplish this task, the R&D setup must be transformed into a best-in-class within the global automotive headlamp industry in terms of development costs, lead times and total lifecycle costs. With the help of the 3DSE R&D optimization approach, an interdisciplinary team quickly analyzed the current situation at ZKW, selected the most promising fields of action, and developed an optimization roadmap. The “LEAN Engineering Program” (LEP) derived from this has the goal of sustainably streamlining today’s product development and making the increasing product complexity manageable.

“3DSE’s expertise in systems engineering and lean engineering, as well as its contribution of best practice approaches, has enabled us to develop a holistic concept for an R&D setup of the future,” says Ralf Klädtke, CTO of ZKW Group. “For piloting and implementation, we continue to rely on 3DSE to ensure sustainable implementation.”