Business Practices for Engineers

I just can’t stand them anymore. Those consultants and smart advisors who go from company to company telling everyone—whether they want to hear it or not—how brilliantly Chinese firms are making Western companies look old and foolish. But you know what? These consultants are right about one thing: Competition has gotten tougher, there’s no denying that. If we want to survive in this new world and...

It’s always about personal advantage! What’s your reaction to this statement? “Of course it’s about me! That’s always been my motto.” Or “Absolutely not, that’s antisocial! The common good must stand above the individual’s self-interest.” Let’s unpack this together. I hope we can agree on a common perspective. But if you have a different opinion, don’t hesitate to share it with me. You can use the...

I think very few people believed we could actually pull it off! It’s been 25 years now. We were a small team with a big mission: “Build a company, develop a portfolio of heavy commercial vehicle axles, and supply the American subsidiary’s serial production with high quality and deliver reliability in 3 years.” When we tackled this impossible mission, one thing was clear: We could only do it togeth...

A Counterintuitive Approach to Better Project Outcomes In my last article, I made a provocative claim. Project team members shouldn’t report directly to the project manager. Instead, they should have a different supervisor. I know this goes against common practice. That’s exactly why I want to explain my reasoning today. The Core Problem: Power Imbalance in Conflict of Interest Situations Let me g...

Sometimes it proves useful to explicitly clarify matters that intuitively seem self-evident. Upon closer examination of common project management terms, I find that not everything is as clear as assumed. This is precisely what causes misunderstandings in collaboration. People wonder why things don’t run as smoothly as they would like. For this reason, I want to discuss the following terms in this...

Back When a Truck Was Just a Truck In the first half of the last century, trucks were beautifully simple. We divided them into three categories: * Light trucks * Medium-duty trucks * Heavy-duty trucks They were universal tools. You hauled grain, coal briquettes, beer, milk, furniture, machinery—anything that needed to get from Point A to Point B found its ride on the flatbed of the same truck. For...

For the most impatient among you, here’s the answer right away: In the commercial vehicle industry, I consider it fast to bring a new vehicle to market in 4 years. With the classic approach used in the past, new vehicle development took 6 to 8 years. In the article “Getting the timing right” , I explain that in the commercial vehicle industry, it’s possible to estimate market demand over a 3 to 4-...

Picture this: You're the leader of an organization that desperately needs to transform. You've identified the problems, you have a vision for the future, and you're ready to make it happen. But here's the brutal truth—most transformation efforts fail not because of bad ideas, but because of bad organization. As a leader, my job isn't just to spot what needs fixing. It's to analyze my organization,...

Agile project management is based on Scrum. That's how it all started, so let's introduce Sprint meetings and Scrum boards first. Once that works, we can scale up and think about the higher complexity in projects. Makes sense, right? That's why I often see teams taking this approach. Noooo, that's not the right way to do it! I used to do something similar myself. Back then it wasn't called Scrum -...

As a product development leader, I regularly attend project review meetings where we discuss the status of important product development projects. In these meetings, project teams typically present two very different types of topics to top management: 1. Technical Concepts and Product Performance Reports For these agenda items, project teams seek management confirmation and approval for technical...

There are moments in work life that you never forget. I experienced one of these moments when we introduced our first Drum Beat in a pilot project. The project team sat together in a meeting, planning the Drum Beat deliverables. Everything should have been sorted out. Now we just needed to wait for everything to be implemented, and then we could celebrate our first successful Drum Beat. The review...

For many years, I had a metric on my shopfloor board that was probably very unusual. At least I don't know any other manager who worked with this KPI. It was the "task completion speed" – the duration until completion of tasks that my management team had put on their task list. The primary goal wasn't to work faster. It was explicitly allowed to optimize this metric by simply taking on easier and...

There's something strange about vehicle development projects: they span years—yet time is always too short. Whether it was a complete redesign of the entire product portfolio or just a minor facelift, the pattern was always the same. * It starts off rocky. * The further the project progresses, the more my daily work transforms into pure chaos: task forces I suddenly find myself in, top management...

I can still remember it like it was yesterday. In 2010, we launched the Mercedes Benz Atego Hybrid. The vehicle was a full-fledged Mercedes with mass production quality. It offered 20% fuel savings in distribution traffic – a value that customers would kiss our feet for. I was proud as a peacock: The world had never seen a truck like this. No competitor anywhere had anything like it in their lineu...

A -- B -- C -- D -- this is how the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) designates the sample phases in product development. The VDA defines these phases in its recommendation for maturity level assurance of new supplier parts in the product development process, to regulate cooperation between suppliers and vehicle manufacturers. (Reference: Verband der Automobilindustrie e. V. (VD...

Plans are only perfect until they meet reality. No plan survives contact with the real world. Experienced project teams understand this reality and prepare for deviations in advance, enabling quick course corrections through targeted countermeasures. The method for doing this is risk management, and it's actually not that difficult. Nevertheless, I regularly observe how projects get into trouble b...

In this article, I would like to introduce the last important role in the project management team and explain why it makes sense to invest the necessary capacity in this role. The Project Organization Whenever a new large project starts, the same question always arises: Can we set up a project house for the project where all the people working on this project sit together in one large area, commun...

The project manager is responsible for achieving project goals—that much is undisputed. But does this responsibility also extend to ensuring that: * A high-quality product is developed? * All technical teams collaborate closely? * Necessary technical compromises are balanced and decided in alignment with brand promises? * Product quality remains high, and competitiveness is maintained? * Product d...

* Is your organization still small enough that everyone knows each other? * Is your product still so simple that every team member understands it inside and out? Then, teamwork is easy to organize. You come together, discuss what needs to be done, and do it. However, successful companies grow, and inevitably, a point comes where the group becomes too large and the product too complicated for this...

In classic project management, the Project Manager is a superhero . He is the general responsible person , responsible for everything that happens in the project, including delegating responsibilities and tasks to a team, which he usually cannot choose himself, and ensuring that everything gets done. This sounds logical and is convenient and clear for everyone. The project stakeholder has the same...

The moment an employee is assigned responsibility for a project, they know: Something extraordinary begins—from tomorrow onward, their world will never be the same! Does the Project Manager Know Their Responsibilities and Tasks? How does a project manager know what's expected of them? What determines their success or failure? And what decides whether they'll be celebrated as a hero or condemned as...

As a teenager, I tinkered with my motorcycle, always trying to improve it. Today, we call this tuning or customizing. It was my childhood dream to develop vehicles—a dream I almost didn't dare to have. In my twenties, it finally happened. I landed my first job as a design engineer in vehicle development, and shortly afterward, a new vehicle development project began. Can you imagine how proud and...

It was one of those moments that stay in memory for a long time. I was invited to give a keynote speech, and I talked about project management and transformation. During my presentation, I mentioned the DCVI concept — a method that is very close to my heart and on which I have already written an article here . The session was engaging, with interested participants asking thoughtful questions and p...

No manufacturer can succeed alone; suppliers are vital to every successful OEM business, directly contributing to the final product's success. In the last article, I discussed the various types of products and their development environments. In doing so, I described the series product as being developed even before its eventual customers are identified. If you’re a supplier or work for one, you mi...

Product development — sounds self-explanatory, doesn't it? But what exactly is a 'product'? I would now like to get to the bottom of this fundamental question and take a closer look at the special characteristics of products. I've worked on vehicle development my entire professional life, so I'm very good at how a vehicle product development process works and the environment in which it takes plac...