Six action areas to boost competitiveness in European electronics manufacturing services

By Kai Balder, Alexander Fey and Oliver Holtkemper

The European electronics manufacturing services (EMS) sector is entering a decisive phase in its history. The EMS market is expected to expand 5–6% annually through to 2029, yet headline growth masks significant challenges. Performance gaps between segments are widening and customer expectations around resilience, technology and sustainability are accelerating. This means the traditional playbook of scale-driven, cost-focused competition will no longer guarantee success in the next decade.

For decision-makers, this shift creates an urgent need for strategic action. Success will depend on making deliberate choices about which segments to prioritize, how to embed resilience as a value driver and how to expand along the value chain. Roland Berger’s “Navigating the next decade” report recommends six action areas to help EMS providers, distributors and OEMs achieve these goals and get ahead of the competition. They are outlined below - for more information download a copy of the full report.

1. Maximizing market growth exposure

While the EMS market is growing overall, some market segments are recovering more strongly than others. Demand in the Defense, Medical and Energy segments are accelerating, for example, while Automotive remains stagnant. In addition, the traditional model of globalized, cost-driven manufacturing is giving way to resilience and specialization. Leading EMS providers are therefore making conscious portfolio pivots toward higher-margin segments – even at the cost of de-prioritizing their former key account customers. The full report looks at how senior EMS leaders can achieve this pivot, for example, through developing specialized engineering capabilities.

2. Building resilient supply chains

Recent crises have exposed how fragile global supply chains truly are. Yet OEMs increasingly expect EMS partners to ensure continuity without paying for redundancy. The providers successfully meeting these expectations are the ones moving from reactive crisis management to more resilient “full transparency” supply chain strategies . They focus on creating awareness to enable their customers to manage “risk proportionate dependency”. They are also moving to make resilience chargeable. The report recommends levers to position resilience as a core element of the value proposition, for example, by investing in digital supply chain transparency and risk analytics.

3. Increasing competitiveness through M&A

The European EMS landscape remains fragmented, particularly in lower-volume, higher-mix segments, while customers consolidate supplier bases. Targeted mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and buy-and-build strategies help expand reach and strengthen exposure to attractive verticals. As a result, M&A activity in the sector is accelerating as EMS providers look to consolidate capabilities, expand geographic reach and integrate value-added services. But scale alone is insufficient. Advantage emerges from operating models that combine local agility with group-wide synergies. The report outlines numerous strategies to achieve such a structure through M&A.

4. Fostering deep and lasting customer relationships

Customer relationships in EMS are evolving from transactional, price-driven engagements to long-term, strategic partnerships. Indeed, strong personal relationships and early-lifecycle support services are now key purchasing criteria in the EMS market. This is raising the bar on providing class leading technical capability, compliance and customer intimacy. To meet these evolving purchasing criteria, leading EMS providers are, for example, striving to ensure both geographic and service offering proximity, leveraging digital platforms and developing deep technical and regulatory expertise. The report assesses how to implement such as a customer-centric operating model.

5. Expanding services beyond EMS

Customers increasingly expect integrated solutions combining manufacturing with design, testing and lifecycle services. As a result, the most successful EMS players are expanding systematically along the value chain. Service expansion is a key differentiator and EMS providers with broad value chain coverage are now the most profitable in the EMS sector. To be successful, value chain expansion needs to be jointly realized together with regulatory compliance and quality assurance capabilities. The report therefore focuses on the key investment targets for service expansion, such as design for manufacturability.

6. Prioritizing technology, talent & sustainability

Technological and regulatory change is accelerating. Miniaturization, connectivity, advanced packaging, alongside rising sustainability demands and speed to market needs are reshaping expectations. Future leaders will treat technology, talent and sustainability as one integrated agenda, investing in AI, automation, engineering capabilities and transparent ESG performance. This makes future-proofing your organization non-negotiable. The report looks at which areas to prioritize, for example, recommending a focus on developing talent pipelines and upskilling.

In its conclusion, the report makes clear that resilience, specialization and value-chain integration will define competitive advantage in EMS over the next decade, while addressing talent shortage through AI and automation is the key to deliver this advantage. So the time to act is now. Download a copy of the report on this page or feel free to contact one of our experts. We look forward to hearing from you.

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