FAQs
With the launch of Onward Partners, the Industrie 4.0 Maturity Center (i4.0MC) team is reorganizing its consulting business. The company is intended to meet the massively increased demand for consulting services in industry and ensure further growth as well as further development of the portfolio in terms of content. The founders and employees bring extensive expertise and many years of experience from over 250 projects implemented as executives in the i4.0MC in collaboration with international industrial groups.
"With Onward Partners, we are creating a unique range of offerings to support manufacturing companies in all aspects of digital transformation. Onward Partners allows us to clearly highlight our full capabilities, and advise customers even more comprehensively", explains Christian Hocken, Managing Partner and founder of i4.0MC and Onward Partners. Onward Partners' portfolio is focused on global, cross-enterprise synchronization and scaling of Digital Transformation.
What is Onward’s vision?
Onward is a young consulting company specialized in the digital transformation of manufacturing companies. We believe in the enormous opportunities that digitalization and sustainable action offer. Onward's core value proposition is to shape change and make it "manageable" - with already known Industrie 4.0 Maturity Center methods, but also with new consulting offers & actual "doing". In doing so, we will, as before, act at the interface between the corporate level and the plants and further expand our unique mix of consulting services combined with our own scalable digital products.
What will happen to i40MC?
Onward stands for the same values as i4.0MC. The new company is part of the further development of the still young i4.0MC story and the people who work for i4.0MC and Onward. Through the new business formation as Onward we can take care of the needs of our customers even more comprehensively. i4.0MC will remain as a brand and company and is still located as a center at RWTH Aachen Campus. Through collaboration with FIR, acatech and other research partners, we ensure that thought leadership remains part of our DNA and that our customers can continue to access high-quality studies as usual.
What is the relationship of Onward and i4.0MC?
i4.0MC will remain as a brand and company and is still located as a center at the RWTH Aachen Campus. Onward will operate as an international consulting service provider with offices in Aachen and Cologne to start with. At the same time, Onward will be enrolled at i4.0MC. This is how we ensure that thought leadership remains part of our DNA. The brands can appear together as needed and support each other. Customers can thus benefit equally from our consulting expertise and our platform technology as well as from our continuing education offerings and studies. Onward and i4.0MC complement each other in their future orientation and are not in competition with each other.
Why was the reorganization necessary?
We want to position ourselves future-proof and profitable in the long term. With this in mind, we decided to establish a modern consulting company that can provide comprehensive support to the manufacturing industry and respond flexibly to new (technology) trends. With the new structure we gain flexibility and the ability to expand our business to longer-term and larger-scale customer engagements.