The Off-Highway industry is undergoing profound change as software-defined machinery, automation, connectivity, sustainability requirements, and new business models reshape agriculture, construction, and other machinery segments. FEV Consulting helps manufacturers, suppliers, investors, and other industry stakeholders navigate these interdependencies by connecting business strategy with product, technology, software, operational, and organizational decisions.
INDUSTRIES
Off-Highway
What is transforming the mobile machinery industry?
Off-Highway companies must manage several transformations at once: automation, software-defined machinery, connectivity, sustainability, alternative powertrains, changing customer expectations, and intensifying competition. These shifts are tightly connected – portfolio choices shape architectures, technology decisions determine operating models, and digital ecosystems enable new services and business models. The challenge is amplified by the industry’s lower volumes, higher application variance, longer product lifecycles, specialized customer requirements, critical dealer and service networks, and harsh operating environments. Success therefore depends on managing cross-domain trade-offs rather than optimizing individual functions in isolation.
How does FEV Consulting help companies in the Off-Highway industry navigate transformation?
FEV Consulting supports manufacturers, suppliers, investors, associations, and technology providers across the Off-Highway ecosystem. We help clients translate market change, technology disruption, and organizational complexity into practical decisions and implementation-oriented roadmaps. By connecting strategy, products, software, operations, and organizational transformation, we help ensure that decisions remain aligned across the entire business.
Strategy and growth
FEV Consulting supports Off-Highway manufacturers, suppliers, and investors in making growth, portfolio, investment, and market-entry decisions. We assess market dynamics, customer requirements, competitive positioning, M&A opportunities, and technology-driven growth fields across agriculture, construction, and adjacent machinery sectors. The objective is to identify where future value pools emerge, which opportunities justify investment, and how clients can build sustainable positions within evolving value chains.
Digital and software-defined machinery
Software, connectivity, cloud platforms, AI-enabled development, and digital services are reshaping how machinery is developed, operated, maintained, and monetized. FEV Consulting helps clients define digital product strategies, software and hardware architectures, technology-stack roadmaps, operating models, and data-enabled business models. Our focus is translating software-defined machinery concepts into practical development roadmaps and commercially viable products and services.
Products and technology
FEV Consulting helps clients make product and technology decisions that balance customer requirements, competitiveness, profitability, and implementation feasibility. Our work spans product architectures, modular platforms, technology roadmaps, future powertrain pathways, cost optimization, and product specification decisions. By connecting customer requirements, technology maturity, engineering feasibility, and investment implications, we provide a structured basis for long-term product and portfolio decisions.
Transformation and performance improvement
Growing software content, increasing complexity, and higher customer expectations require Off-Highway companies to rethink how products are developed, validated, and delivered. FEV Consulting supports organizational health checks, governance design, operating-model improvements, product-development optimization, procurement transformation, and performance-management initiatives. The goal is stronger execution, faster decision-making, and development organizations that can manage future product and technology complexity.
Sustainability and future powertrains
There is no single decarbonization pathway suitable for every Off-Highway application. FEV Consulting helps clients evaluate electrification, hybridization, hydrogen, renewable fuels, and advanced combustion technologies based on operating conditions, infrastructure, customer economics, and regulatory developments. Rather than promoting individual technologies, we help define application-specific strategies that remain technically feasible, commercially viable, and robust under future market conditions.
What Off-Highway experience does FEV Consulting bring?
- 0+Off-Highway projects delivered
- 0+agricultural and construction equipment companies supported
- 0+product, software, and digital transformation programs delivered
- 0+future powertrain, decarbonization, and portfolio strategies developed
Case samples
How does FEV Consulting support Off-Highway transformation in practice?
Software-Defined Machinery Strategy & Roadmap
An agricultural equipment manufacturer engaged FEV Consulting to define the foundation for future software-defined machinery. The objective was to connect precision technologies, embedded software, connectivity, cloud-based services, and future business models into a coherent long-term strategy. FEV Consulting assessed existing capabilities, reviewed technology trends, analyzed organizational requirements, and supported the definition of future software and electronics architectures. The program also addressed digital operating models, governance structures, and the prioritization of future software-enabled customer features. The resulting roadmap linked product strategy, technology development, and business value creation, providing a structured foundation for future software-driven differentiation and investment decisions.
Product Development Transformation & Validation Excellence
A machinery manufacturer initiated a broad transformation of its product development organization to improve execution, governance, and cross-functional collaboration. Increasing software content, growing product complexity, and overlapping validation activities had created organizational challenges across multiple engineering functions. FEV Consulting analyzed development processes, organizational interfaces, governance structures, and validation approaches. Based on this assessment, we developed integrated validation concepts, defined future ways of working, improved decision-making structures, and supported implementation planning. The transformation increased transparency, reduced inefficiencies, and established a scalable foundation for future product and technology programs.
Electrification from Concept to Prototype
An Off-Highway manufacturer wanted to explore the potential of battery-electric machinery through an accelerated development program. FEV Consulting supported the project from user-journey and use-case analysis through concept definition, hardware and software development, vehicle build-up, commissioning, and turnkey delivery. Within a 10-month program, multiple battery-electric functional demonstrator vehicles were developed and delivered in different maturity levels to evaluate technical feasibility and future product opportunities. The project accelerated strategic decision-making by combining business objectives, customer requirements, and practical demonstrator experience within a single development framework
Platform & Portfolio Strategy
A machinery manufacturer faced increasing complexity across product platforms, variants, and technology requirements. FEV Consulting supported the development of a future portfolio and platform strategy aimed at balancing customer-specific requirements with scalability and efficiency. The project included customer requirement analysis, competitive benchmarking, portfolio assessments, modularity concepts, and architecture evaluations. By identifying common building blocks and opportunities for platform harmonization, FEV Consulting helped establish a roadmap for reducing unnecessary complexity while maintaining market coverage. The resulting strategy improved transparency around future product investments and supported more structured portfolio decisions.
Future Product & Technology Strategy
An Off-Highway manufacturer sought to define future product concepts across multiple machinery applications while preparing for changing customer expectations, sustainability requirements, and technology developments. FEV Consulting evaluated market trends, customer requirements, application-specific needs, and emerging technology options. The project included the development of several future machine concepts, product requirements, technology pathways, and implementation scenarios. By connecting business strategy, product definition, and technology planning, FEV Consulting helped create a long-term roadmap that provided clear guidance for future investment decisions and portfolio evolution.
Future Powertrain Strategy
A machinery manufacturer required guidance on how electrification, hybridization, renewable fuels, hydrogen solutions, and advanced combustion technologies could influence its future product portfolio. FEV Consulting assessed alternative technology pathways across multiple applications while considering operating profiles, infrastructure requirements, regulatory developments, customer expectations, and commercial viability. Rather than focusing on a single technology, the project evaluated several pathways and identified application-specific transition strategies. The resulting roadmap supported informed investment decisions and ensured that future powertrain choices remained technically feasible, commercially attractive, and resilient to changing market conditions.
Cost Transparency & Transformation Support
An agricultural machinery manufacturer initiated several programs to improve cost transparency, increase cost competitiveness, and strengthen decision-making across product development activities. FEV Consulting supported cross-functional teams through structured cost analyses, transparency models, cost-reduction workshops, implementation planning, and ongoing program support. The work connected engineering, purchasing, product management, and leadership functions to create a common understanding of cost drivers, trade-offs, and improvement opportunities. Beyond the definition of recommendations, FEV Consulting provided hands-on implementation support to help ensure that identified opportunities translated into measurable actions and sustainable improvements within ongoing product and portfolio programs.
Off-Highway leaders will not win through electrification, automation, or digitalization alone. They will win by turning complexity into executable choices across the full product and business system.
Frequently asked questions
Non-road mobile machinery, often abbreviated as NRMM, refers to mobile machines used outside public road transport, including agricultural machinery, construction equipment, and selected industrial equipment such as material handling machines. FEV Consulting uses Off-Highway as the overarching industry term while applying segment-specific expertise to each engagement.
In our projects, the main challenge is managing several transformations simultaneously. Off-Highway companies must respond to automation, software-defined machinery, connectivity, sustainability, alternative powertrains, changing customer expectations, and global competition while managing high product variance, long lifecycles, specialized applications, and cost pressure.
FEV Consulting sees that, although many technologies overlap, Off-Highway operates under different conditions than automotive: longer product lifecycles, lower production volumes, more specialized applications, and more diverse operating environments. Successful transformation therefore requires industry-specific solutions rather than the direct adoption of automotive approaches.
FEV Consulting defines software-defined machinery as equipment whose functions, performance, updates, services, and customer value are increasingly enabled by software. In Off-Highway, this includes embedded software architectures, connectivity, precision technologies, cloud platforms, digital services, data-driven operations, AI-enabled development, and feature governance.
Our project experience shows that the relevant technology depends on the application. Battery-electric systems may fit compact or infrastructure-supported use cases, while hybrid systems, renewable fuels, hydrogen technologies, and advanced combustion engines may remain relevant elsewhere. FEV Consulting compares these options by duty cycle, infrastructure, cost, performance, regulation, and customer value.
FEV Consulting helps manufacturers reduce complexity through portfolio decisions, modular architectures, common components, platform strategies, feature governance, standardized software and hardware layers, and clearer product development processes. Our objective is not to eliminate variety, but to manage it deliberately across products, technologies, and organizations.
FEV Consulting helps clients translate digital capabilities into value through improved uptime, machine utilization, maintenance planning, fleet management, operator support, precision operations, and customer experience. We also assess data-enabled services, software functions, digital ecosystems, and lifecycle business models.
In our work, the central development challenge is integrating mechanical systems, hydraulics, electronics, software, connectivity, validation, safety, data platforms, and customer-facing digital functions. FEV Consulting addresses the resulting issues in governance, interfaces, launch performance, validation efficiency, software release management, and organizational alignment.
FEV Consulting identifies growth opportunities by combining market intelligence, customer requirements, technology trends, competitor benchmarking, regulatory analysis, and capability assessment. In our projects, attractive opportunities have emerged in electrification, software, automation, digital services, future fuels, components, system integration, and lifecycle services.
FEV Consulting has supported acquisitions and partnerships that provide access to new technologies, software capabilities, digital business models, regional markets, supplier capabilities, and portfolio extensions. We assess strategic fit, technology relevance, integration requirements, customer value, and long-term competitiveness to turn transaction logic into an executable growth path.
Get in contact
with our team
Kai
Krüger
Krüger
Director and Expert in Off-Highway
Patrick
Glusk
Glusk
Director and Expert in Off-Highway
