Making forklifts digital

PwC used its BXT approach — short for business design/strategy, customer experience, and technology — bringing together experts in these three disciplines to co-create the Digital Campus with the Campus team of the KION Group.

The KION Group is a global leader in industrial trucks, related services, and supply chain solutions. Across more than 100 countries worldwide, the KION Group designs, builds, and supports logistics solutions that optimize material and information flow within factories, warehouses, and distribution centers. KION is the largest manufacturer of industrial trucks in Europe, the second-largest producer of forklifts globally, and a leading provider of automation technology. Its brands are, among others, Linde Material Handling, STILL, Baoli, OM Voltas, and Dematic.

With an installed base of more than 1.4 million industrial trucks and over 6,000 installed systems, the KION Group’s customer base includes companies in all industries and of all sizes on six continents. KION has more than 33,000 employees and generated revenue of €8 billion in 2018.

Intralogistics was once the domain of manual processes and systems. But customers are demanding more than machinery. They are increasingly seeking digital solutions that make the most efficient and effective use of the forklifts they buy. To speed KION Group into its new digital reality, its board of directors crafted a long-term strategy—KION 2027—anchored on developing digital savvy among its more than 33,000 employees. The goal is to expand KION’s industry-leading position in the field of digital solutions for customers.

To take KION’s digital offering to the next level, PwC supported the launch of the Digital Campus. The Digital Campus is a vibrant space where a professional team of experts from various Digital disciplines develops innovative concepts and solutions for the KION Group. PwC’s network of experts supported the KION Group in jump-starting the buildup and operations of the campus within a few months.

To co-create the Digital Campus with the Campus team of the KION Group, PwC used its BXT approach—short for business design/strategy, customer experience, and technology—bringing together experts in these three disciplines. Its design rests on two pillars. First, the digital accelerator, where real challenges faced by the KION Group and its customers were solved. The second is the academy trainings. The KION Group teams learn new skills and put them to work immediately. Together with experienced PwC professionals, the KION Digital Campus provides viable, functional, digital solutions to meet real customer challenges, offering training in agile development, design thinking, and other critical digital skills and tools.

In the first nine months, the Digital Campus conducted nearly 20 design workshops involving more than 150 people. The project accelerator developed several solutions that garnered significant attention around the company. Where typical software projects can take a year or more, the Digital Campus as an accelerator is much faster. In just a few months, the team developed a customer application connected to a smart device that allows companies to measure and assess how efficiently forklifts are moving through warehouses. The Campus also created an app for the KION Group’s own service technicians that dramatically simplified the administrative work of servicing vehicles. Both of these were created in just a few months.