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CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

Accelerating Innovation of Premium Automotive Design

How DRÄXLMAIER Group streamlines idea management and pre-development workflows with a future-ready Innovation Framework powered by ITONICS. Centralizing innovation for faster decisions, better collaboration, and a clear path from ideas to premium automotive solutions.

70%

reduction in manual project reporting effort

Hundreds

of hours saved annually from automated workflows

50%

faster idea workflow from submission to validation

2x

increase in engagement with internal partners

“The premium automotive market demands both speed and precision. For us, innovation is non-negotiable, but without a centralized Innovation Framework, we were constantly chasing information, managing silos, and relying on outdated methods that didn’t support the pace of our industry.”

– Danijela Janjic, Innovation Management, DRÄXLMAIER Group

Dräxlmaier Innovation Platform
Illustrative example of DRÄXLMAIER Group's Innovation Framework
THE CHALLENGE

Keeping pace with industry change

DRÄXLMAIER Group, a first-tier supplier to various premium automotive brands, specializes in advanced interior systems, battery technologies, and on-board electronics. The company has a long history of continuously evolving its expertise and portfolio to meet the needs of the global automotive industry. Yet, as electrification, digitalization, and sustainability accelerate the pace of change, DRÄXLMAIER Group recognizes that staying ahead requires rethinking not just products, but also the processes that power innovation.

For DRÄXLMAIER Group’s Innovation Management, tasked with moving ideas through the pre-development stage, the lack of a centralized system meant valuable time was lost to administrative tasks like searching for, verifying, and reporting on project information. These inefficiencies not only slowed progress but also created challenges in collaborating across teams. The Innovation Management department needed an Innovation Framework to streamline pre-development and, ultimately, the journey from ideation to market-ready, industry-leading solutions. 

Dräxlmaier Pre-Development Project Board
Illustrative example of DRÄXLMAIER Group's Innovation Framework

Initial situation at the DRÄXLMAIER Group

Before implementing the ITONICS Innovation OS as the backbone of its Innovation Framework, the Innovation Management department at DRÄXLMAIER Group spent much of its time searching for, verifying, and reporting information.

Requests from internal partners on the status of pre-development projects often resulted in a scramble to pull information from multiple people and static documents. The Innovation Management department lost time, but also confidence in the accuracy of their reporting and the potential to grow their team’s capabilities in other areas.  

  • Fragmented information spread across spreadsheets, slide decks, and emails
  • Risk of sharing outdated data and making misinformed decisions
  • Lack of transparency into project statuses and progress
  • Time-consuming, manual reporting processes prone to error
  • Limited scalability for managing growing innovation activities
  • Difficulty in aligning teams and leadership around shared goals

Objectives of a centralized Innovation Framework

Streamline pre-development

Centralize project tracking and reporting to minimize redundant tasks and ensure consistent, reliable information.

Transparent workflows

Provide clear, audit-compliant processes for idea management and project evaluations to enhance transparency and collaboration.

Cross-team alignment

Align internal partners and leadership around a single source of truth to improve decision-making and accountability.

"ITONICS has fundamentally changed how we work. Processes that used to take days now take hours, and the time we’ve saved has been reinvested into developing groundbreaking ideas and staying ahead of industry trends."

– Danijela Janjic, Innovation Management, DRÄXLMAIER Group

THE WAY FORWARD WITH ITONICS

A future-ready Innovation Framework

With its Innovation Framework, powered by the ITONICS Innovation OS, DRÄXLMAIER Group centralized its idea management and pre-development workflows, enabling the Innovation Management department to minimize its administrative burden and reinvest its focus in innovation.

Idea management

Ideas are easily submitted, organized, and evaluated in the Innovation Framework. Each idea goes through a collaborative workflow, including technical verification, review by the Sales Department, and approval by leadership.

This process ensures new ideas align with DRÄXLMAIER Group's innovation goals around efficiency, sustainability, and unique selling propositions, and are ready to be transferred to the pre-development portfolio.

Portfolio management

Pre-development projects are centrally tracked within the Innovation Framework where all steps adhere to a defined phase-gate workflow. Status indicators—green, yellow, or red—clearly signal project progress and bottlenecks.

Project managers are empowered to take proactive measures and prioritize critical tasks while leadership gets a high-level view of the entire pre-development portfolio. This control ensures smooth transitions and sustained momentum as these projects transition into full development.

Targeted reporting

The Innovation Framework simplifies reporting by delivering real-time, audit-compliant data in interactive dashboards and Kanban boards. Metrics such as project contributions to cost savings or sustainability are instantly accessible, streamlining management presentations and regulatory requirements. With accurate, up-to-date insights, leadership can confidently make faster, evidence-based decisions.

Modular innovation

By grouping related pre-development projects into strategic focus fields within the Innovation Framework, DRÄXLMAIER Group can integrate multiple innovations into its end products. This modular approach encourages cross-project synergy, increasing efficiency and enabling the company to adapt to market changes and scale innovation faster.

Achievements

  • Significant reduction in manual reporting effort: Automation of reporting tasks allows the team to shift focus from administrative work to more strategic innovation efforts, driving overall productivity.
  • Faster, more efficient idea evaluation: By centralizing idea management, ideas are consistently evaluated to ensure high-impact ideas are fast-tracked to development.
  • Improved cross-team collaboration: Centralizing project information enhances coordination between teams, ensuring better communication and alignment across departments involved in pre-development.
  • Accelerated decision-making: With real-time access to accurate project data, leadership can make informed decisions faster, reducing wait times and improving overall agility in innovation.
  • Increased project transparency: Clear visibility into project statuses enables teams to identify challenges earlier and take proactive steps to keep projects on track.
  • Greater capacity for innovation: Streamlined processes have freed up time that was previously spent on administrative tasks, allowing everyone to dedicate more effort to developing innovative solutions.
ITONICS-logo-dark-2021-1
"Since implementing ITONICS, DRÄXLMAIER Group has transformed innovation management from an administrative burden into an industry-leading strength. With reliable innovation data at its fingertips, DRÄXLMAIER Group continues to set new benchmarks for excellence in premium automotive solutions."

– Ilona Meiller, Senior Customer Success Manager, ITONICS

Ilona-Meiller

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About DRÄXLMAIER Group

DRÄXLMAIER Group develops and manufactures complex wiring harness systems, exclusive interiors, and innovative solutions for the mobility of the future, including high-performance high-voltage battery systems, on an end-to-end and cross-system basis. The globally present company covers the entire process chain: from initial idea to development to precise, in-sequence delivery of products to the assembly lines of automobile manufacturers. As a family business, DRÄXLMAIER also attaches particular importance to responsible and sustainable business practices for the benefit of people, the environment, and society.

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