Keynote and executive advisory for Western industrial leaders
Compete with
China SpeedBeyond the subsidies
Both bars run at the same speed. In the 42 months Europe is still building, the Chinese competitor has already launched the next generation.
Ask a European executive to explain that gap and the answer comes back in three words: subsidies, cheap labour, corners cut. Those factors are real. They account for roughly 15 percent of it.
The other 85 percent is structural — design philosophy, decision culture, competitive intensity, and a relationship with time that is fundamentally different from ours. Structural means transferable. It can be built here.
Where the gap actually comes from
Only 15 percent of it lives in your location
- Product design60%Chinese engineers design for what the customer actually needs. Western engineers design for every regulation, every edge case, every theoretical liability — and for eternity.
- Supplier ecosystem25%Proximity, speed, flexibility. And it travels: as Chinese OEMs globalise, they bring their tier-one and tier-two suppliers with them.
- Location factors15%Labour, utilities, working hours. The part everyone talks about, and the only part that stays behind at the border.
It is not about where you are. It is about how you think.
Cost-gap composition based on Roland Berger, China’s cost and speed advantage, benchmarking product development across automotive, machinery, white goods, power tools and wind energy: 25–40% faster, 20–30% cheaper.
The dark factory test
25%
Remaining cost gap against China for a fully automated plant modelled in Germany — 200 robots, 150 AGVs, autonomous logistics, two people on site, running 24/7. In Romania, 15 percent.
Take labour cost out of the equation almost entirely and most of the gap is still there. That is not subsidies. That is design philosophy and supplier ecosystem — and both of them are choices.
The talk
What China Speed really teaches the West
Not a country briefing, and not an argument for copying China. A working session on the mechanics behind a 42-month gap — built from twenty years inside European industrial companies and from an operating role inside one of China’s largest manufacturing groups.
Urgency as an operating system
Chinese industrial leaders have talked about their own possible collapse for decades — not for drama, but to keep the organisation permanently mobile. In most Western firms the unspoken assumption is that we have time.
Decision-making as a weapon
24-hour decision cycles. Approval delays measured, named and reported daily. Compare that with a decision that enters a committee and returns six weeks later with three new sub-committees and no owner.
Targets that force a different conversation
If the development cycle is 48 months this year, next year’s target is 36. Miss the target and the leader changes, not the target. The difference between a 5% goal and a 50% goal is not scale — it is what the organisation is allowed to question.
The fifteen-year data head start
Chinese construction equipment carried sensors as standard by 2010, while Europe was still debating ownership and business cases. When AI arrived, one side had fifteen years of dense operational data and the other had pilots.
The supplier ecosystem that travels
Chinese OEMs threaten Western OEMs; their supplier ecosystem threatens Western suppliers; and Western OEMs sourcing from China to close the gap accelerate both. What can be rebuilt here, and how.
Finding your mountain goat terrain
A goat cannot outrun a lion, so it climbs where the lion cannot follow. Chinese firms took the emerging markets first, then moved west. The question is which ground you can genuinely defend while you close the speed gap everywhere else.
The close
Eight things you can start on Monday
Every talk ends with these. They are not aspirations — each one is a change a leadership team can decide on in a single meeting.
Build a lean operating system that involves everyone
Daily bottom-up problem-solving, top-down ambitious targets. Not a suggestion box.
Break the law, temporarily
Suspend policies, watch what actually happens, then regulate only what genuinely needs direction.
Stop letting explanations substitute for change
Results can be explained. Explanations do not change the result.
Make people accountable and end the committees
Committees protect participants from accountability. Assign individuals and give them authority.
Run product development in parallel
The sequential structure is the bottleneck — not how fast people work inside it.
Invest in data and AI without waiting for the framework
Build governance in parallel, not first. The Chinese sensor story is the proof.
Reform supplier relationships toward shared urgency
Including partnering with competitors where neither of you can reach scale alone.
Design the tension between experience and fresh eyes
Experience adds new features brilliantly. It almost never removes obsolete ones.
The speaker
Twenty years on both sides of the gap
Johann (Hans) Koenigshofer has spent close to twenty years in senior operating roles across European industrial manufacturing. Ten of them at PALFINGER — as CIO/CPO, then CEO of the EMEA region, then CEO Asia in Shanghai and chairman of the board of the SANY–PALFINGER joint venture. After that, COO of the Wittur Group and Managing Director of the Putzmeister Group.
Since 2023 he has been COO Global Production Operations at SANY Group in Changsha, and runs MYWAY Consulting from Salzburg as an independent advisor. Both sides of the same problem: helping Chinese manufacturers internationalise into Europe, and helping Western manufacturers close the speed and cost gap before it closes on them.
He advises corporates and consulting firms on global footprint strategy, production relocation and product development speed. Which means the numbers in this talk come from models he has built, not from a slide he was handed.
- Operating rolesPALFINGER · Wittur · Putzmeister · SANY
- Based inUpper Austria, working across Europe and China
- LanguagesGerman (native), English
- SectorsCapital goods, construction machinery, automotive supply, elevators
Free download
Compete with China Speed — the executive briefing
Seven pages you can hand to your leadership team before the discussion, not after it. The full cost-gap breakdown, the mechanics behind Chinese decision speed, and a diagnostic you can run in ninety minutes.
- Where the 42-month gap comes from, broken down
- Four mechanics that make an organisation fast
- Five principles that build speed into people
- The eight Monday actions in full
- A speed diagnostic: twelve questions for your leadership team
Send me the briefing
PDF, seven pages. No newsletter unless you ask for one.
Formats
Three ways to run this
Keynote
45 minutes, plus Q&A
For conferences, customer events, supplier days and management offsites. Delivered in English or German.
Executive workshop
Half day, 8–20 people
The talk, then your numbers. Where your own development cycles, decision latency and supplier responsiveness actually sit, and which two changes to make first.
Advisory
Ongoing or by the day
Global footprint strategy, production relocation, and product development speed programmes — including work with Chinese manufacturers entering Europe.
Bring the gap into the room
Tell us the audience, the date and what you want them to leave with. You will get a reply within two working days.