BCG Greater China

Industrial Goods project

Our client is a leading global automotive manufacturer, an early mover in China. We were asked to help assess the potential for a new local partnership to further strengthen our client’s position in China.

The project was structured in two steps. First, the team developed a comprehensive fact base by looking at the client’s overall strategy and financial performance, R&D, sourcing, manufacturing and sales and distribution, as well as regulatory issues around JVs and partnerships. Then, the team developed and assessed different options.

The project proved to be of great value to the client! The fact base itself led to new insights on the business. BCG became a real thought partner, developing creative ideas and, thinking more broadly, assessing the impact of a new partnership on the client’s relationship with its existing partners. Based on the team’s recommendation, the client made a thoughtful, value-creating decision.

Click on the image to read some more personal perspectives on the project.

My role was to assess the potential partner’s sales and distribution capabilities and understand how they could be leveraged in a joint venture.

Field visits were among the most exciting parts of my job. To verify the information the potential partner had supplied, I picked several representative cities across the country and typical dealers in those cities. ‘Seeing is believing,’ so I worked with sales experts from the client side to talk to front-line sales personnel/ management and observe their daily operation. Non-stop inter-city flying was sometimes challenging, but getting an in-depth understanding of local markets, businesses and people was fascinating and helped build a solid foundation for our overall recommendations.

My main role was to help our client assess its potential partner's manufacturing capabilities.

Wearing a big helmet and oily work clothes, I spent a lot of time walking around the potential partner's factories, carefully watching their operations to understand their manufacturing capabilities. Returning to the team's war room, I looked like an assembly worker but worked as a consultant to write slides and formulate recommendations. My appearance changed the image of a strategy consultant in people's minds. Every one began to call me "Engineer HE" instead of "Mr. HE", demonstrating that I’d not only been accepted on the factory floor, but had also established my credibility as an engineer. Later, they even sought my engineering advice on their manufacturing operations.

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