Project 4 - xEV Battery Quality Assurance Benchmarking
EV Battery Manufacturing Quality Assurance
Intro:
Very ‘hardcore’ benchmarking project. The level of detail required for the analysis was way too deep for a typical consulting project (but aren’t they all?) . It required not only industry-specific knowledge, but also insight into much sensitive information that no one typically has access to. Because of the nascent nature of the industry, benchmarking in itself is obviously of great value in itself for the client, as they all know how rare information sharing is, and how directly verifiable that information would be were we to acquire it. This project required a high degree of reliance on expert interviews, and any attempt to supplement some leads through desk research, or through market research reports proved to be futile. We had to basically uncover the entire quality control system and measures that the global leading manufacturer had utilized to improve their product quality, using this to leverage secure additional electric vehicle deals from OEMs. Not the most ‘fun’ of benchmarking projects, but I guess the on upside of this project is the actual level of detail you get to understand, so the deep dive provides much valuable information on the inner workings of the industrial processes of battery production.
Duration/Members/W&L Balance:
Basically was a 4-man project team along with 2 interns, for a scheduled 5~6 week project. Work-life balance wasn’t the worst, and it seems like we managed to get off around 1 am on average. The project difficulty, I would rate around a 7~8, on a scale of 10. However, despite the complexity of the project, I believed I was able to get through it mostly because of the industry-specific knowledge that I already had on the subject matter, since I originally came from the xEV industry. This wasn’t the most heavily staffed project either, as there was one principal, serving as the PM, with 3 junior analysts to support.
The project was split into 2 modules, with me leading the main module with another junior, who had just recently joined the firm to help support me, along with both interns.
The direct client counterparts were quite reasonable, but this project in particular had a number of different stakeholders that we had to engage, due to the sensitive nature of anything concerning the quality procedures of their production lines. We had to visit the client site quite often despite covid, and we ended up going to their HQ (a 3-hour drive), around twice a week to do catch-up meetings, and also conduct internal interviews and workshops with their direct quality and production teams to try to garner the information that they required to correctly assess the knowledge and capability gap between the client and the industry leader.
Thoughts on Industry:
I’ve never disliked the xEV battery industry. It's such a booming market, and the size of the market is expected to be as big as the semiconductor industry within a couple of years, which basically was the bread and butter for Korea during its growth in the past decades. It helps that geographically we were in the center of this industry (basically the fastest growing manufacturing industry globally), and that we are able to pinpoint the direction of the growth of the xEV Sector, seeing how changing battery technologies are positioned to drive innovation.
In regards to the quality procedures during the production process, it required an in-depth understanding of every production process, and the materials that need to be processed in order produce lithium ion batteries. Ramping up our understanding of the source matter while carving up a relevant message for the client was key for this particular project.
Project Details:
This particular project felt like a ping-pong match; there was an unending array of back-and-forth between the us and the client upon after new ounce of information we could find. After every interview we would conduct of the industry experts, there would be some minor detail that the client would want to extrapolate on, or to delve in deeper in order to understand the actual mechanics of the a particular implementation. You know you're ‘deep-diving’ in a project when the client basically asks you to find out the exact parameters (range, duration, temperature, etc.) that the competitors are using in each of essential machinery and equipment they are utilizing for each of their 100+ processes, that are not even applicable to the client in question. (for example, they asked us to see the laser welding strength and pattern for a battery tab, including the degree of precision, the type of laser used, the type of electricity utilized to generate that laser, etc.)
The challenge was to develop a framework, or rather, a structure in which the information from other companies we were to benchmark could be directly applied and compared to on equal footing with the client’s own internal system. The leveling of each procedure may be different for each different quality procedure, and of course each manufacturer would prioritize some processes over the other as a strategic directive, so those could serve as the interesting points to benchmark, to delineate the differences in approach to setting up a quality system, and the methods utilized to ensure product quality. These all culminated to recommendations to the client regarding how to improve their current quality processes, identifying the gap they had compared to other manufacturers, as well as from the perspective of multiple OEMs (customers).
Personal thoughts:
It is quite clear that the xEV industry will be booming for both the manufacturers, and in my case, for consultants as well. There will be many obstacles in the near future, from navigating the uncertainties of the market, to the intricacies of figuring out the competitive edge over one another in a hyper-competitive landscape. Consultants will be brought in not only to help formulate long term strategies for growth, but also for setting up optimal structures and identifying optimal processes, perhaps just providing some emotional and mental support in assuring each player that no one has the clear right answer to the problems everyone is facing at the moment. It’ll be an exciting time to be involved in such an industry, and I have a strong feeling that I’ll be more heavily involved in such projects in the future as well.
Consulting Lingo:
Hard Benchmarking
Competitive Capabilities Analysis
xEV Battery Manufacturing/Quality Assurance
Expert Interviews