About us

Beyond Materials, a joint venture between FEV Consulting and Mitsubishi Corporation (MC), provides specialized strategy and engineering consulting services to material industry. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, we are supporting Japanese material suppliers and their ecosystem, such as component and parts manufacturers or OEMs dealing with materials-related challenges.

 

Our team includes experienced management consultants specializing on application technologies and product portfolio strategies – e.g., in the field of mobility, and material experts with broad experience in various types of materials ranging from chemical-based materials to metals or ceramics. 

Our Unique Selling Proposition:
We not only tell you about the “What” and “Why”. We go “beyond” and help you with the “How” – how to adapt and use a material according to future product design requirements based on our market intelligence and how to formulate and execute a go-to-market strategy to participate in future market growth.

Our Vision

Our vision is to be the strategic and engineering consulting partner of choice for industrial material suppliers. We want to enable the materials industry to leverage its unique capabilities beyond its typical value chain position in a global and circular economy.

When navigating our customers towards sustainable growth we are not limited to advisory services around the material itself and the typical value chain – we go beyond.  We break with old structures and processes.

 

We think and act beyond the conventional material supplier-customer relationship and enhance our customer’s product portfolios and organizations by offering a set of holistic and scalable solutions. With the help of a unique set of capabilities, resources, and network, Beyond Materials integrates and connects material suppliers in the circular ecosystem and allows for a sustainable future.

Who is behind Beyond Materials

Beyond Materials was
established by Mitsubishi Corporation and FEV Consulting GmbH – two companies
with a strong set of complementary capabilities, industry know-how and network.

  •           Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) is a globally integrated
    business enterprise originating from the trading business, now developing and
    operating businesses together with its offices and subsidiaries in
    approximately 90 countries and regions worldwide, as well as a global network
    of around 1,700 group companies. MC has broad network and business experience
    in the materials industry.
  •           FEV Consulting combines top management consulting
    expertise with the technical capabilities and know-how of the FEV Group.
    In-depth industry knowledge enables the development of pragmatic solutions to
    the most pressing and complex issues facing today’s enterprises.

What makes Beyond Materials unique

We are the bridge between the mobility industry and the materials industry. Through our deep connection with FEV Group we have a strong background in many target applications. But at the same time, we speak the language of material suppliers through MC’s extensive network and experience in the materials industry. Thanks to this position, we are able to contribute to future development activities of end users (i.e., OEMs and Tier-1s) by promoting technical innovations from the materials industry.

Our Scope of materials

Our services address all types of materials, from engineering plastics to adhesives, glass, composites, textiles and nonwovens, ceramics, aluminum, steel and other functional materials, such as those used in battery cells.

Materials_BM_v2

A target-oriented product development is necessary for both, the efficient use of human and financial resources as well as to maximize the sales potential of new products. However, this requires a deep understanding of the market environment, its drivers for change and key stakeholders. For material suppliers, it can be difficult to capture long-term trends in their target markets, as daily business is mostly determined by short-term customer requests. However, this is necessary to remain competitive through innovations and customer-oriented development activities and products.

 

We are offering frequently updated reports and customer specific studies tailormade for our customers’ most pressing questions. For that we continuously screen relevant market and growth drivers as well as new innovations in the fields of materials and high-tech applications. As a result, we empower our customers to make validated decisions within their organizations based on up-to-date market intelligence.

The world is changing faster than ever. Global mega trends such as digitization and sustainability are transforming whole industries in which established manufacturers and suppliers are now competing with each other and against new tech players for market shares. In addition, recent events have shown that the industrial globalization has made global supply chains more vulnerable to disruption. Consequently, corporate strategies must comply to these new boundary conditions and even proven strategies must be reviewed.

 

We help our customers in making the right decisions by developing a sound and unique strategy for their organization. This can range from a holistic corporate strategy to developing a dedicated product portfolio strategy and complementing market entry strategies. As we deeply understand both domains, materials and  applications, we can well explain the “What”, the “Why” and also the “How”.

Having deep material know-how and being capable of developing superior material compositions based on individual customer requirements is only a first step. However, when approaching new customers, it is necessary to showcase that the offered material improves the customer’s target application performance. Whether it brings weight reduction, increases energy efficiency or durability, customers often want proof of how their products are benefitting from your material.

 

Together with our material and engineering experts, we support our customers not only in optimizing their materials for customer applications, but also in developing hardware demonstrators. This Proof of Concept (PoC) helps our customers to showcase the superiority of their material to their clients and ensures trust in the brand entailing growing and recurring business. In fact, we can even go further and support along the entire product development process: from ideation to prototyping and preparation for large-scale industrialization.

In the past, we have seen numerous material suppliers with strong and innovative products. At the same time, OEMs and suppliers from various industries are longing for new materials with enhanced functionality and performance improvements. However, often times material suppliers and end customers do not come together, simply because there are many intermediaries in the value chain or there are regional or cultural gaps due to different countries.

 

We are building the bridge between our customers and their clients! Whether it is about creating a sales and marketing concept or bringing our customers and potential customers together, we are the partner of choice!

A lot of R&D effort is made to newly develop superior material formulations. However, often this does not follow a structured process, as transparency about the necessary investments, required resources and targeted revenues and profits is insufficient.

 

We support in defining and implementing a tailormade R&D and Product Management System that helps our customers track progress and success of research and development activities and products. Defining processes and roles, identifying the right KPIs and designing a monitoring dashboard, or installing and running a Project Management Office – we can help from end to end.

A target-oriented product development is necessary for both, the efficient use of human and financial resources as well as to maximize the sales potential of new products. However, this requires a deep understanding of the market environment, its drivers for change and key stakeholders. For material suppliers, it can be difficult to capture long-term trends in their target markets, as daily business is mostly determined by short-term customer requests. However, this is necessary to remain competitive through innovations and customer-oriented development activities and products.

 

We are offering frequently updated reports and customer specific studies tailormade for our customers’ most pressing questions. For that we continuously screen relevant market and growth drivers as well as new innovations in the fields of materials and high-tech applications. As a result, we empower our customers to make validated decisions within their organizations based on up-to-date market intelligence.

The world is changing faster than ever. Global mega trends such as digitization and sustainability are transforming whole industries in which established manufacturers and suppliers are now competing with each other and against new tech players for market shares. In addition, recent events have shown that the industrial globalization has made global supply chains more vulnerable to disruption. Consequently, corporate strategies must comply to these new boundary conditions and even proven strategies must be reviewed.

 

We help our customers in making the right decisions by developing a sound and unique strategy for their organization. This can range from a holistic corporate strategy to developing a dedicated product portfolio strategy and complementing market entry strategies. As we deeply understand both domains, materials and  applications, we can well explain the “What”, the “Why” and also the “How”.

Having deep material know-how and being capable of developing superior material compositions based on individual customer requirements is only a first step. However, when approaching new customers, it is necessary to showcase that the offered material improves the customer’s target application performance. Whether it brings weight reduction, increases energy efficiency or durability, customers often want proof of how their products are benefitting from your material.

 

Together with our material and engineering experts, we support our customers not only in optimizing their materials for customer applications, but also in developing hardware demonstrators. This Proof of Concept (PoC) helps our customers to showcase the superiority of their material to their clients and ensures trust in the brand entailing growing and recurring business. In fact, we can even go further and support along the entire product development process: from ideation to prototyping and preparation for large-scale industrialization.

In the past, we have seen numerous material suppliers with strong and innovative products. At the same time, OEMs and suppliers from various industries are longing for new materials with enhanced functionality and performance improvements. However, often times material suppliers and end customers do not come together, simply because there are many intermediaries in the value chain or there are regional or cultural gaps due to different countries.

 

We are building the bridge between our customers and their clients! Whether it is about creating a sales and marketing concept or bringing our customers and potential customers together, we are the partner of choice!

A lot of R&D effort is made to newly develop superior material formulations. However, often this does not follow a structured process, as transparency about the necessary investments, required resources and targeted revenues and profits is insufficient.

 

We support in defining and implementing a tailormade R&D and Product Management System that helps our customers track progress and success of research and development activities and products. Defining processes and roles, identifying the right KPIs and designing a monitoring dashboard, or installing and running a Project Management Office – we can help from end to end.

Our customer-centric consulting services can be divided into Revenue-up and Cost-down services. For the former, we help our customers to increase their revenue potential by identifying new markets for the existing product portfolio, as well as new product opportunities based on their individual capabilities (through Market & Technology Intelligence, Strategy Development, Product Development and Marketing Support). On the other hand, our Cost-down services are aimed at ensuring the long-term profitability of our customers. We support this with services such as Portfolio Management, Organizational Excellence, Strategic Costing and Procurement.

As Beyond Materials we continuously strengthen our service offering and adapt further to the needs of our customers. We also want to expand into non-conventional consulting services by identifying new functions and scalable digital solutions that will help material suppliers and customers to connect. 

Contact us

Tetsushi Abe
Executive President

Johannes Houben
Executive Vice-President

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