Situated in southern Germany, a region traditionally strong in engineering excellence and renowned for its competitive industries, Pforzheim University is surrounded by some of the world’s most succesful companies. Taking advantage of this geographical privilege, we offer our third semester students an opportunity to apply their management knowledge in the real business world through a 3 to 4-month long company project. In winter semester 2015/16, our MBA students worked in five teams with Mahle, Deloitte, Siemens Healthcare and Bosch on a diverse range of projects.

The project at Mahleinvolved aiding Mahle Aftermarket GmbH, a premium supplier of aftermarket products, in making a decision on entering a particular market with a new product line. During the 3 months project period, the Hochschule team, with the assistance of the project team from Mahle, prepared a business case after studying the market, analyzing the product offering and preparing the financial projections for the next ten years. The student team took the opportunity to learn more about the aftermarket industry, design and execute a B2B market research, perform competitor analysis, explore differentiation potential, prepare scenarios, develop product flow and associated operations, and prepare a complete business plan. The results of the project were presented in a corporate meeting with the department heads held at the company headquarters in Stuttgart.

The project for Deloitte revolved around Social Media strategy development for Deloitte Germany. The project lasted for 4 months during which our students under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Frauke Sander analysed current and potential Social Media Channels and strategies of Deloitte and its competitors. Many initiatives and strategies suggested by the students during the mid term presentation are already being deployed by Deloitte. The final presentation was held at Deloitte Düsseldorf office where the students presented their final results for 2 hours in front of managers from Innovation, Social Media and HR Marketing department. Both parties were equally satisfied after the presentation since Deloitte decided to implement many of the ideas.

At Siemens, the main focus of the project was ‘Resource Efficiency’. The student team spent a lot of time looking at different process maps within Siemens Healthcare and gave recommendations based on Industry benchmarks and upcoming trends. The team was guided by Prof. Dr. Rudi Kurz and the students reported directly to the Vice President of ‘Resource Efficiency’ department at Siemens Healthcare, Dr. Zhen Wu, which was a great learning in itself.

The Project at Bosch- ‘Market Research on customer requirements on automotive operation’ achieved great success under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Harald Strotmann. Under the project, the students had to interview 3 customer groups: construction machine users, construction companies and the manufacturers to know more about their requirements. The project was great deal of hard work as the students travelled around to look for construction sites themselves. The students had the opportunity to present their 4 month working results to the managers at Bosch, Stuttgart.