BCG Experience

Alexa
Project Leader

After completing my medical studies, I was looking for a challenging and varied environment that would allow me to do international and interdisciplinary work. At the same time, I didn't want to lose sight of my field.

At BCG, I have been able to continually broaden my horizons in many exciting projects, and at the same time to sustainably shape my clients' businesses. For example, I developed a market entry strategy for a hospital chain and supported a pharmaceutical company in developing an organization structure for a market access unit tailored to Germany's health-care market. I have also done a number of other strategy development projects for hospitals, clinics, insurers, and medical-technology companies.

The switch from clinical work to consulting took some getting used to. But BCG's open and supportive culture helped.

BCG also provided me with opportunities for personal development outside of project work. With BCG’s support, I got an MBA from Columbia Business School—an enriching experience both professionally and personally.

Alexa's Background

Alexa studied medicine at Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf and at the Technische Universität München (TMU). She spent semesters abroad at Cornell Medical School in New York, at the UniversitätsSpital in Zurich, and at the University of Sydney.

Alexa joined BCG after completing a doctorate with highest honors (summa cum laude) on oncolytic herpes simplex virus at the Institute of Experimental Oncology and Therapy Research of the university hospital Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich. In 2010, she received an MBA with honors from Columbia Business School in New York.

Gereon
Associate

The evening after my interviews with BCG, I received a letter of acceptance to spend two months as a Visiting Associate (VA). Four months later, there I was—in the classic consultant situation of waiting until afternoon to find out where I would be flying to the next morning.

LaunchPad training came first. During the training, in addition to picking up valuable skills, I was able to build up a network of personal and professional contacts at BCG, which was a great support during my internship.

My project assignment was a perfect fit—I was deployed to Tallinn, Estonia, on a strategy case for a telecommunications company. The time I spent there was fantastic and extremely varied: in an exciting and dynamic country, working at an ambitious company for six weeks.

I directly experienced how relevant our work was for the client, whose representatives treated me as an equal from day one. I was amazed to find how I could contribute knowledge and relate it to the challenge we were addressing for the client, especially considering my background was in political science.

Beyond the practical skills I learned as a VA—such as how to work with Excel, how to write a storyline for a presentation, and how to employ various discussion and analysis techniques—I also soon realized why people are BCG's most important resource. I was able to learn so much from all the BCGers I got to know. Every BCGer has a unique life story with fascinating stays abroad, unusual hobbies, and interesting ideas for the future.

I am grateful that I was able to get to know BCG, and I highly recommend the company. Everything that each individual brings to the table is acknowledged as a contribution to successful client support.

There are very few other occupations where the challenges are so numerous, relevant, and interesting. In fact, there are few other jobs in which you test your limits and gain such enriching and valuable experience thanks to the team you work with.

Gereon's Background

Gereon studied political science and public administration at the Universität Konstanz (BA and MA) and also holds a master's degree in European political economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He spent a semester abroad interning at United Nations headquarters in New York, focusing on public-private partnerships.

Gereon joined BCG after working as managing editor for the academic journal European Union Politics and completing his studies. Prior to that, he had interned with BCG in 2011.

Luise
Associate

It's the first day of my first project assignment. On the way here, I read through the information on the client and the project. The task is to do a benchmarking in medical-technology-component manufacturing. I am truly buried in information and materials, and am doing my best to familiarize myself with the topic.

Our team includes one pure business major and two other industrial engineers, and they have all done several projects in the health-care and industrial-goods sectors. I soon realize that my background in mechanical engineering (with a specialization in production engineering) will be a plus.

Our team room at the client location is directly above the production area. The two tours of the plant that we had during the first week were very helpful in defining the issues and really understanding the client's business. The highlight for me was a welding machine as large as a family home.

Now things have taken off full speed. Our first analyses of the client's core competencies in research, development, and production require specific technical expertise and intensive discussions. For some of the technical terminology, we have to gather in the team room to make sure everyone's on the same page—there's usually someone who can explain things precisely.

My first contact with the client goes well, even though I'm immediately asked how many projects I've done at BCG. But as soon as they also find out that I have a technical background, things look up.

For our competitor benchmarking, we conduct external interviews and I quickly realize that this task requires a highly structured procedure. Rapidly gaining an understanding of both the client industry and the business, with all of its technical and economic challenges, is absolutely essential. Again and again, the team sits down together to consider how our collective insights can be best summarized and presented. The client's project leader is deeply involved as well.

By now I have a working access card and we're in the middle of crunch time: The steering committee meeting, where we will present the first results of our benchmarking, is just around the corner. No dull moments around here.

Luise's Background

Luise studied engineering, economics, and management with a specialty in mechanical and production engineering at the University of Oxford. She wrote her master's thesis in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and worked abroad in Hong Kong and Detroit. She graduated in 2010 with a master's degree in engineering with first class honors with distinction.

Luise joined BCG after completing her MBA at Collège des Ingénieurs in Paris.

Christian
Partner & Managing Director

Day 1: Building up networks—of men and machines

We meet at the client location for the first time. "With four of us working on this project, it should be fine," I think. I know the other BCG project leader from earlier projects. We're both engineers. His specialty is aeronautics, and mine is mechanical engineering. Besides us two, there's a business manager with years of experience in production optimization, and a civil engineer who just completed his first project in the energy sector.

Our assignment: production optimization in pig-iron and crude-steel manufacturing. We compare notes: we all know the iron-coal diagram inside and out, and we are familiar with blast furnace and converter processes in both theory and practice. Our young colleague surprises us with his knowledge of the details of alternative steel-production processes. But in our first talk with the client team, it quickly becomes clear that the client doesn't expect exotic concepts, but practical and rapidly implementable solutions within the framework of the existing plant technology.

With the client project leader, we go through the schedule for the next three months. He names 20 employees from different departments as our contact people. Suddenly, a four-person team doesn't seem like much…. But at least our office in the team room is now set up. The WLAN is functioning, and printers and fax machines have been installed—engineers should at least be able to manage that. And after we've familiarized ourselves with the telephone system the client provided, we're ready to get started.

Day 20: Feeling the heat—and stopping the salamander

We've had some hot days. But it wasn't the blast furnaces that beaded our foreheads with sweat—it was the heated discussions of how the client's current production processes could be further improved. The company has been working on this for decades, and our challenge now is to find even more long-term potential in production.

We meet weekly with the client team to present intermediate results and consult on what to do next. Today, at our third "jour fixe," we reached a decisive milestone: our analyses are pointing in the right direction. Even more importantly, some of the originally more skeptical members of the client team are starting to get really enthused about the project.

Together, we discuss how the plants could be operated more consistently and efficiently and how the current mathematical process models could be enhanced. The cost of these changes sparks an intense debate. The search for the "cost eutectic" will be harder than we thought. It takes two hours to agree on exactly how to determine the marginal costs of crude-steel production.

And then there's the salamander. A murmur goes through the ranks. Later, we find out that this volatile compound—a mass of iron that accumulates at the bottom of a blast furnace as a result of the escape of molten metal through the hearth—must be avoided at all costs!

The last day: crossing the finish line together

We did it! After countless data analyses; after discussions of the coking process, iron ore types, and raw-materials procurement strategies; after interviews with experts in Europe, Asia, and the U.S.; and after phases of euphoria but also frustration, we actually found a way to significantly lower the production costs of pig iron and crude steel.

Together with the client team, we present our results to an impressed board of directors—all of them engineers and experts in the field. After working together so closely for months, we've developed a real camaraderie with the client team.

All of us are proud of what we have achieved—and both sides learned a lot. As a memento, not only of working together on the project but also of rooting for each other’s teams during the European Cup, the BCG team receives a Tipp-Kick game set bearing the client's company logo. Needless to say, the set is 100 percent steel!

Christian's Background

Christian is a partner and managing director. He is the Operations node for the Germany & Austria system and the regional practice area leader for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South Africa; part of the Lean Advantage Experts' network, and a core member of the Industrial Goods practice. Christian's experience includes many strategy and restructuring cases, including turnaround, profit improvement, working capital management, reorganization, and large-scale program management.

Prior to joining the firm, Christian worked for more than seven years in the industrial turbine and compressor division of Mannesmann Demag (today part of Siemens AG), where he held positions as a project director and product manager. He was actively involved in the worldwide reorganization of the company, designed and launched a new product program with his team, and led several large-scale engineering projects in the chemical and oil industry.

Christian holds a degree in mechanical engineering with specialization in aeronautics from the University of Braunschweig (Germany) and the University of Bordeaux (France). He also holds an MBA from ESCP-EAP in Paris.