Automotive engineering 2025

2011

Most automotive companies realize that they need more globally integrated development. However, most development employees – and hence most development work – are still located in the company's home region. Whereas basic development is often focused in one region (the home, and not necessarily the lead market), adaptive development is frequently located in two regions (the home and the largest foreign market).

The need to cover a broader technology and product portfolio is well understood and the new skills needed for the future have been defined. However, determining what areas to shed is much more difficult and not always supported, especially by middle management, who tend to be skeptical regarding transferring competences to external partners.

Increased diversity is stated as a goal, but in reality, a single nationality clearly dominates at most automotive companies, especially on VP and SVP levels. This is particularly true for OEMs.

And last but not least, improving engineering effectiveness and efficiency is a clear objective – but how to attain that objective is unclear. To achieve these goals, we propose a five-step framework for managing the transformation into a highly effective glocal engineering organization.