Digital strategy sees car supplier target £263m revenue growth

It is doing this by means of ‘Agenda 4 plus One’, a programme which it launched in 2016 and which has now been expanded to comprise 20 initiatives.

As reported, the programme is structured into four plus one categories: ‘Customer focus’, ‘Operational excellence’, ‘Financial flexibility’, ‘Leadership and talent management’, and the ‘plus One’ – ‘Securing long-term competitiveness and value creation’.

These categories are further broken down into 20 individual initiatives, including ‘E-Mobility’, ‘Industry 4.0’ and ‘Digital Agenda’.

The objective of the ‘Agenda 4 plus One’ programme is to sustainably grow the Schaeffler Group’s value and secure the group’s competitiveness.

The programme will add some €300m (£263,1m) to Schaeffler’s earnings by 2022; it is also the basis on which the company intends to bring its EBIT margin before special items back up to its long-term average of 12 to 13% and achieve the financial targets set for 2020.

In addition, Schaeffler will invest around a billion Euros in relation to the “Agenda 4 plus One” programme in order to safeguard the Schaeffler Group’s operating profitability and put it on a sustainable, long-term footing.

Schaeffler stated that 35% of the overall ‘Agenda 4 plus One’ programme, including the newly launched initiatives, has already been implemented. Worldwide there are currently about 1,000 Schaeffler employees actively involved in implementing the programme.

Among the 20 initiatives making up the ‘Agenda 4 plus One’ programme are the ‘E-Mobility’ and ‘Industry 4.0’ initiatives in the Automotive OEM and Industrial divisions, respectively.

The objective of these two initiatives is to further develop and futureproof the Schaeffler Group’s product range and service portfolio and to focus them more closely on mechatronic systems.

In its Automotive OEM division, the company has achieved a number of further E-Mobility milestones, with eight volume production orders and 25 customer projects currently under way.

These developments are driven and coordinated by three competence centers, located in Germany, China and the USA. Alongside this, under the ‘Industry 4.0’ initiative, the company intends to expand the mechatronics capabilities of its Industrial division.

It will achieve this by combining all of its existing activities in a single organisational unit and supplementing them with digital service offerings. In doing this, the company has set itself the target of increasing the Industry 4.0 share of its Industrial division’s total revenue to 10% by 2022.