This Is For You If
- Losing on price: your product is technically competitive, but tenders keep going to the lower bid.
- Limited cost visibility: your BOM has grown historically and nobody's quite sure what individual assemblies should cost.
- A different cost structure: purchasing is negotiating percentage points while your Chinese competitors are working from a fundamentally different base.
- No appetite for a redesign: you want to cut cost without launching another redesign project.
What We Do
We help small and medium-sized machinery manufacturers in DACH build full product cost transparency and bring cost down to should-cost level.
Where it makes sense, we then integrate Chinese suppliers into the sourcing structure, without compromising quality.
China is one lever, not the starting point.
Step 1 is always closing the gap to should-cost with your current suppliers, before any sourcing changes are even on the table. For some companies, that's enough on its own.
Because this is cost reduction, not revenue growth, every euro saved stays in your pocket, straight to your EBIT.
The Process, in Four Phases
Analyse
Full visibility into your current cost structure, benchmarked against should-cost.
Propose
We lay out which levers apply to you and the savings potential of each.
Decide
Together, we agree which actions to take, and in what order.
Implement
Execution, with monthly reviews to track progress and reassess focus.
How We Do It
SavingPotential
0 ONE team, ONE goal
A short scoping conversation to align on goals, data access, and what success looks like. From there, we drive the whole transition end-to-end: negotiation, quality assurance, logistics, ramp-up.
1 Full Cost Transparency ~3-7%
Before anything else, we need complete visibility into your current bill of materials (BOM) cost structure. Understand who your suppliers are, where they're located, and how the cost of the assemblies they supply breaks down (material, labor, depreciation, logistics, packaging, and the margin applied). Compare this to the should-cost for each BOM item. The first target is simple: bring today's cost to should-cost level, not more, not less. No China involved yet.
2 Current Sourcing Improvement ~3-6%
Before considering any sourcing change, we challenge your current suppliers directly: renegotiating terms, consolidating volumes, and pushing back on specifications and minimum order quantities where "good enough" really is good enough. We also test alternative manufacturing processes. Still no China involved - this step is entirely about getting more from the suppliers you already have.
3 Source From a China-Owned Supplier Based in Europe ~5-9%
From here, we assess whether and how much cost could improve further through Chinese sourcing, using a Pareto analysis to focus first on the highest-cost items, and always looking at total cost of ownership (TCO), not just direct product cost (DPC). A lower unit price that gets absorbed by logistics, import duties, or inventory carrying cost isn't a real saving. Where it does make sense, we identify and propose Chinese-owned suppliers already operating inside Europe and help you select the best fit. Once selected, they start as a logistics hub, so you see the cost benefit with minimal disruption to how you operate today.
4a Move Production to the Supplier's European Site ~3-7%
As trust is established and the quality is proven, that same relationship evolves: the production moves to their European site, giving you a Chinese cost structure without leaving Europe. Where it makes sense, we drive supplier consolidation and vertical integration, so you pay one margin, to one supplier, not a margin on top of a margin.
4b Full Sourcing From China ~2-5%
Where it makes sense, sourcing and production move fully to China. Rather than the coastal tier-1 cities many companies default to, we target tier 2/3 cities, where hourly labor rates sit below RMB 40 (~CHF 4) and vertical integration can go furthest, consolidating suppliers and production directly at the source.
5 Establish Your Own Production in China ~4-8%
The final stage: building on the know-how and supplier relationships from steps 1–4, we help you set up your own production site in China and build your own supply chain there directly. You are no longer directly dependent on an external Chinese supplier.
Actual potential depends on the product, starting cost structure, and selected implementation path.
Not every lever is right for every product. We evaluate the business case, total cost of ownership, risk and implementation effort together, and only pursue the options that make economic sense.
Why Work With Us
Most advice on Chinese sourcing comes from people who have never run a manufacturing operation themselves. We have: leading technology, product, and cost transformation from inside one of Switzerland's largest industrial groups, based in both Shanghai and Switzerland - not from an office coordinating suppliers at a distance.
We've done this as manufacturers, not as consultants.
That's what cost transformation actually requires: building the should-cost model, negotiating from it, and industrializing the transfer, without breaking quality or your production schedule - the same work, under the same pressure, we carried inside a manufacturer ourselves.
We stay through negotiation, qualification, and ramp-up, not just the recommendation, speaking fluent Mandarin and moving comfortably between DACH and Chinese business practice, until the savings show up in your numbers.
Our Non-Negotiables
- We promise, we deliver.
- Product stability: no redesign without a confirmed cost-impact assessment.
- ONE team, ONE goal, zero politics.
- Challenge each other, challenge the requirements: sometimes "good enough" actually is good enough.
- We make sure your project team members understand the why: not just the what.
- Your engineers leave with real cost intuition: what are the cost drivers, and what is the cost of a given feature.
- Never a single point of failure: risk and mitigation actions get defined upfront, so a supply disruption never catches you off guard.
How We Work
A six-month product-cost transformation, embedded directly in your organization (duration depends on product size):
- 1 day/week on-site: working directly with R&D, Production, Purchasing, and Logistics.
- 1 day/week for prep: reserved for preparation and data analysis.
- Monthly reviews: progress reviewed together with top management.
Let's look at your product.
In an initial discussion, we'll review your product structure, how cost decisions are made today and a small sample of BOM items. That gives us a first indication of where the largest opportunities may be, before you commit to anything.
Discuss Your Cost Potential