Acquisition after acquisition, and no shared product structure.
Growth by acquisition, complexity by default.
A global, multi-billion Swedish maker of mining equipment had grown through a long run of acquisitions, and now needed to consolidate what it had bought. The product structure had to be simplified, new variants brought to market faster, the supply chain made more efficient, and the whole offering made to read as one.
Without that, each acquisition added its own parts, suppliers and ways of working, and the complexity kept compounding.
Fifteen sub-projects, four continents.
SAM ran fifteen sub-projects - both product and cross-functional - across Australia, Europe, and North and South America, with training and coaching in modularization throughout. Managers worked out shared design principles together, so the structure would be owned locally rather than imposed.
The work was grounded in data collection, product analysis, and on-site fieldwork alongside the designers who would live with the result.
A six-month quotation, done in thirty days.
A wide understanding of modularization took hold among the designer teams, and complete product structures were built for specific product families.
On the modular structure, a quotation that had once taken six months was produced in thirty days - and the deal was won. Across the business, the consolidation was estimated to reduce costs by some €40 million a year.
