The vice president of engineering at a global materials technology and recycling group to build base of Industry 4.0 technology suppliers to support the implementation of next generation battery materials production lines.

The materials technology company was rapidly expanding its capacity to meet demand from electric vehicle battery cell manufacturers. Investment in the automation of production and quality control processes was required to meet customer requirements. But the company was uncertain about which use cases to invest in. Further, the lack of preferred digital technology suppliers was slowing the solution evaluation and planning process. In addition to off-the-shelf technology, the client needed technology innovation partners that it could collaborate with to develop customized solutions. These emerging technologies often lacked clear reference cases. So partners could include organizations such as university research labs or startups, as well as mature technology providers.

• Map Industry 4.0 use case adoptions trends among competitors.
• Select use cases based on cost-benefit-risk analysis and industry benchmarking.
• Identify critical components and solutions to guide vendor and partner selection.
• Manage RFI processes to collect necessary supplier information.
• Prioritize suppliers and identify potential weaknesses to address in the RFP process.
• Hand off detailed supplier documentation.

• After benchmarking 21 chemical manufacturing companies and 310 technology adoptions, Asia Growth Partners prioritized 43 use cases for consideration during planning of the new production lines. These use cases were prioritized according to their expected ROI and implementation risk level.
• We then identified 254 mature suppliers and 309 innovators with relevant capabilities. Suppliers were shortlisted after an initial fit assessment and RFIs were sent to prioritized companies to fill information gaps.
• The most qualified suppliers were recommended for inclusion in RFPs and management discussions. Qualified innovation partners were prioritized for management discussions. This information enabled the client to move past their decision bottleneck and rapidly proceed to solution discussions.