Automotive industry

The Automotive industry is the key business in Germany and generated over 426 billion in 2018, with 150 billion generated within Germany. (Source: BMWi).

Three of the ten biggest automotive supply companies are based in Germany, Bosch and Continental being the top two.(Source: statista).

Simultaneously the automotive industry is going through its biggest challenges right now.

Technology change from combustion engines to the electrical cars is changing OEM as well as suppliers. Where some research and development departments are closed or relocated to other areas in the world there are new technologies which are gaining attention.

Even though some of these developments started a few years ago, it was not obvious how fast these changes would occur. Suppliers created new business units and companies started to upgrade their hard- and software departments.

Schwanke Bros. continuously accompanied this change process for a big German OEM the last years and helped to build up a power electronics department as well as a unified system development department for e-cars. The knowledge which we developed during the searches led to a deep understanding of the development processes within the electric car sector. We not only placed system engineers (f/m/d), we also searched for hard and software developers with extensive knowledge of automotive control units (ASIL C and D).

Our search extended beyond the R&D sections for electrical cars, as we also looked for developers within the autonomous driving area, the braking sensor units and the classic ECU development.

We created a map of the modern technology development in the automotive industry.
Schwanke Bros. have their roots in the automotive industry executive search sector and accompanied a lot of projects between 2003 and 2007 in the turbo charger and transmission sector.

A big client in the steel sector is producing 70% of its goods for the automotive industry. By placing different executive positions for this company, we created a candidate network in the automotive industry and we analyzed the structures in the companies.