Acting instead of reacting

Matthias Kratzsch: The automotive industry is facing huge challenges. The shift from conventional to alternative drives, the growing importance of software, the adoption of new and digital technologies for vehicle development, and the rise of the automotive service world are in full swing. There have also been big advances in autonomous driving, with many new players entering the market from adjacent industries. These changes have brought a number of challenges for our customers in the automotive industry – and to meet those challenges, they need strong partners. In today’s highly competitive market environment, it’s no longer enough to offer support services according to spec.

Kratzsch: I think of it as “acting instead of reacting.” We realize that our customers have new needs. They expect us to master complexity and processes, to contribute integration expertise, and to act with a focus on solutions – and to do it all at high speed, of course. They need partners who can shoulder some of the burden today, not tomorrow, and handle parts of the new challenges completely on their own. So we are consistently realigning ourselves to meet the increasingly stringent requirements. We are adopting digital technologies and automating our development methods, focusing on system requirements, and taking on responsibility for entire systems. And we are putting a lot of effort into building on our technology expertise, flexibility, and autonomy so we can add even more value for our customers. The product of all of this is a new strategic focus for us as a company: IAV as a tech solution provider.

Kratzsch: “Tech” describes our focus on the latest technologies and development methods. “Solution” stands for our proven ability to take technologies into series production in full. And as a provider, we proactively anticipate our customers’ issues and offer our own solutions. This means IAV is no longer exclusively a development partner in the sense of fulfilling customer requirements. Instead, we are harnessing our understanding of systems and our integration expertise to proactively create solutions for our customers’ most important and most pressing issues while also placing our own solutions on the market – and doing all of it much faster than is currently the case. This is a shift in how we view ourselves, our range of services, and the value we provide. And this realignment will make it possible for us to continue to do what we do best as engineers and developers now and into the future: seeking out and realizing creative, innovative solutions.

The article appeared in automotion 03/2021, IAV’s automotive engineering trade magazine. Here you can order the automotion free of charge.