Study On Corporate Development Strategy For SEW-Eurodrive

Corporate strategy stands for the overall scope and direction of a corporation and the way in which its various business operationswork together to achieve particular goals. Without a clear corporate strategy, companies lose sight of their main objectives and lack the drive and focus. Under the background of the Industry 4.0 which leads to a new round of industrial and technological revolution, it is a huge challenge for every manufacturing corporation. The one which can better allocate a company’s limited resources, further establish business expectations and improve a company’s competitive position will definitely become the new winner in manufacturing and even the major player of the world.Under this global industrial environment, SEW-EURODRIVE as the world leading automation corporation adjusts its corporate strategy accordingly in order to fit in the new trend and get a better development. In the preparation phase of the strategy design, SEW-EURODRIVE makes an internal analysis on both theories and practices. In particularly, it applies literature analysis, the environmental analyses including PESTLE model and PRIMO-F model analysis. Due to the 50 international markets, Externally SEW-EURODRIVE has only chosen its global key and influential markets, respectively, west and north Europe, USA and China, as the target groups to investigate the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors which influence the development and market grow of the corporate. The results show a positive market performance and a steady and even slightly increase of market potential. On the other hand, SEW-EURODRIVE has more than one hundred of independent branches and Technology Development Center all over the world, the internal analysis has only be conducted in the headquarterin Germany, on the perspectives of people, resources, innovation and so on. It also suggests a good performance. In conclusion, both external and internal conditions are positive for the development automation technology and the increase and improvement of the employee efficiency, finance performance and so on. Based on the results of the environmental analyses, SEW-EURODRIVE has conducted SWOT analysis,and eventually decides to use the ST strategy as the final corporate strategy, in detail, it is to use the backward diversification, to further conduct the research and development of electrical control, mobile production and transport, express power charging and storage and the software programming, in order to provide complete self-organize production and transportation solutions, realizing the hot topics like human-machine interaction, decentralized control, non-slot joint, mobile production, remote operation and monitoring, and thus become a smart automation system solution provider instead of a component seller of gearboxes, motors and so on. Aiming at achieving the strategic goal, SEW-EURODRIVE decides to focus on the following four aspects, system R & D, project management service, Training and marketing, and tries to realize it in the next 10 years by founding a strategic business unit to take in charge. SEW-EURODRIVE’s new corporate strategy is incredibly meaningful and sheds light on the future development and corporate direction in manufacturing industries. Its innovative courage and revolution sprit are worth to learn by the Chinese automation and machinery manufacturers which have the similar situation.