Changes in markets (globalization, emergence of low-cost countries, etc.) and in customer demand (expected level of service, proximity, pressure on prices, etc.) are prompting industrial manufacturers to define new development strategies (innovation, services, reactivity/flexibility, depth of ranges, productivity) and are forcing them to reconsider their industrial organizations in order to adapt to these new approaches. 

The purpose of the overhaul of an industrial strategy is to improve the structural positioning of the production units, in terms of geographical location, size, production technology or product ranges, in order to harmonize the means of industrial production with the business strategy, while anticipating future developments in terms of:

• capacity (procurement, production, shipments),
• flexibility and security of processes and flows,
• adaptation to organizational and labor constraints (geographical meshing of the sites, versatility and mobility of personnel).

The questions below are also part of the industrial strategy:

• Should production plants specialize in order to simplify their management or, on the contrary, should products be multi-sourced in order to achieve industrial flexibility and/or bring the point of production closer to the market?
• Is there any point in setting up shared production plants of semi-finished products / components that feed the finished product factories?
• Which industrial resources must be deployed when putting a new product family into industrial production (new site(s), spread amongst existing sites, etc.)?

Argon Consulting helps its customers in:

• the definition of the industrial strategy,
• the construction and assessment of medium- and long-term scenarios that take account of business forecasts, existing and future capacity and operational performance targets using our proprietary modeling and optimization tools that cover all the dimensions required for this optimization process (product families, demand and associated macro ranges, modeling of capacity constraints, modeling of the various costs, allocation algorithms, etc.),
• the identification of the necessary technical and financial resources,
• the compatibility of this plan with environmental, human, geographical and cultural constraints,
• the construction of the transformation plan for the implementation of the target (change road map),
• the deployment of this plan and associated change management (changes in culture, behaviors and skills, communication, etc.).