As the market leader in mobile lifting systems, PALFINGER faces the challenge of integrating a wide variety of global customer, market, and application requirements into a single global product architecture and leveraging synergies across all product lines through a modular design. Furthermore, the boundaries of system responsibility are shifting from the traditional, physical lifting system toward a cyber-mechanical architecture that combines various physical and digital systems into an integrated solution.
The CESD (Common Embedded Software Development) project, supported by 3DSE, was a crucial step in aligning PALFINGER’s embedded software development capabilities with the requirements of our “GO FOR SOLUTION / GO DIGITAL” strategy. As our products increasingly rely on advanced software features and digital services, we recognized the need to transition from a fragmented, product-line-specific approach to a unified, scalable, and professionalized development structure.
3DSE guided us through a structured and collaborative process to define a CESD organization. Starting with cross-functional interviews, they helped us identify key challenges and future goals. Through a series of focused workshops, we jointly developed a compelling vision, mission, and success factors for CESD and created a detailed organizational design, including roles, governance, and an agile development framework. A targeted communication and rollout strategy ensured that stakeholder alignment was achieved early on and that the plan was implementable.
Her facilitation enabled us to bring together various stakeholders and translate the strategic intent into a concrete proposal for the Executive Board. The result is a CESD concept that balances central excellence with integration into the product lines, based on a shared architecture and state-of-the-art development processes. This foundation allows us to reduce complexity, leverage synergies, and efficiently scale our software capabilities.
3DSE’s methodical yet adaptive approach, its ability to facilitate complex discussions, and its deep understanding of software-driven transformation were key to this outcome. Their partnership has laid the foundation for a sustainable transformation toward a software-driven organization—one that is ready to differentiate itself in a digital future.
