R&D performance constitutes a major driver of innovation and value generation for automotive suppliers.

The automotive industry has reached a new peak of innovation activity: Think of the electrification of drivetrains, autonomous driving, or high-tech lightweight materials. Automotive suppliers are increasingly the force behind these innovations as they assume more research and development tasks from automotive manufacturers.  But alongside the push for enhanced functionality is an equally strong push for lower cost. As a result, it’s more important than ever to improve R&D performance.

Development projects need to be carefully aligned with customer demands and managed efficiently. That’s a big challenge for suppliers, particularly in view of the growing number and intensity of international collaborative networks.

Oliver Wyman has a broad range of experience with research and development projects for automotive suppliers and engineering services providers. We excel at defining an innovation strategy, improving R&D portfolios, managing collaborative networks (including the execution of M&A projects), improving R&D efficiency using the rapid innovation approach, among others, reducing R&D costs, and improving the entire R&D organization (including approaches for offshoring engineering services).

We have developed a service offering to help automotive suppliers boost their R&D performance in terms of product development costs, products costs, quality of design, lead times, and innovation: The RIDE² (Research Innovation Development and Engineering Excellence) framework has been applied successfully to the seven main modules of a car: chassis, engine, drivetrain, body in white, interiors, exteriors, and electronics and software.