Industrial Product Portfolio Board Adviser

The mandate

The group has accumulated acquired software, specialist controllers, connectivity products and analytics offers whose individual revenue masks overlapping engineering, certification and channel obligations. Founders defend autonomy, sales teams bundle products to protect accounts, and support liabilities survive long after growth stalls. The board’s persistent question is which offers deserve integrated scale, which should be contained as profitable niches and which must close despite vocal customers or historic sponsorship.

The adviser will receive monthly portfolio evidence, interview selected product and channel leaders, attend two Munich councils and observe one customer–integrator roundtable. The cadence will challenge market claims, attach-rate assumptions, shared-platform dependency, migration feasibility, service tails, talent concentration and cannibalisation. Each review will culminate in a concise kill, contain, combine, invest or investigate position with the uncertainties that could change it.

The appointment lasts seven months through the annual plan and one mid-cycle portfolio correction. Extension requires a specific committee resolution explaining why management cannot yet run the evidence standard independently and identifying a closing event. The intended finish is a set of decided product paths and an institutional challenge process, not an adviser permanently revisiting products that executives are unwilling to stop.

The adviser carries no line authority and undertakes no executive responsibility for product roadmaps, workforce actions, customer commitments, acquisition accounting, engineering delivery or discontinuation notices. Management owns analysis and execution; directors decide exceptional capital and exit exposure. The role may challenge evidence vigorously and record dissent, but its recommendation never replaces the accountable portfolio decision.

All mandates, holdings and close relationships involving automation vendors, industrial software firms, distributors, system integrators, private-equity owners and potential acquirers must be disclosed. Product-specific recusal applies where prior work or financial interest could affect confidence. The adviser cannot broker divestments, introduce buyers for compensation or pursue follow-on restructuring work based on confidential portfolio findings.

Why the board wants this voice

Portfolio reviews currently reward revenue visibility and roadmap ambition while distributing integration and service consequences across other budgets. Long-tenured sponsors can also postpone exits by requesting one more commercial test with no defined falsification threshold. The board wants a seasoned industrial-product operator who can expose whole-lifecycle economics, respect legitimate installed-base duties and still make a clear recommendation when organisational sentiment obscures comparative value.

What you will own

• Challenge product theses using customer problem durability, differentiated capability, channel evidence, competitive response and credible willingness to pay.
• Reconstruct whole-lifecycle economics across engineering, certification, integration, sales enablement, support, cybersecurity and migration obligations.
• Test whether shared-platform claims represent real reusable capability or merely central cost allocated across unrelated products.
• Examine channel conflict, bundle dependency, customer concentration and switching barriers that can make reported standalone revenue misleading.
• Define falsifiable scale gates, niche-containment rules, combination logic and humane exit evidence for each reviewed offer.
• Supply independent recommendations on contested products with uncertainty, downside, reversibility and decision-delay cost made explicit.
• Leave a portfolio challenge protocol that prevents historic sponsorship, sunk cost or loud customers from becoming decision criteria.

Candidate qualifications

• Has held enterprise portfolio accountability across industrial hardware, embedded software, connectivity and recurring digital services.
• Demonstrates difficult product closures and integrations that protected installed customers without preserving an indefinite engineering tail.
• Can distinguish attractive standalone gross margin from value destroyed through channel conflict, support burden and platform fragmentation.
• Has challenged acquired founder-led products where autonomy, talent retention and integration economics pulled in different directions.
• Understands industrial certification, cybersecurity support, system-integrator influence and the long operating lives of control equipment.
• Advises boards through evidence and clear falsification tests rather than relying on generic portfolio matrices or personal product intuition.

Non-negotiables

• Can attend both Munich portfolio councils and the designated customer–integrator roundtable within the seven-month calendar.
• Will disclose relationships and financial interests across automation companies, portfolio owners, distributors and transaction counterparties.
• Brings accountable kill-and-scale decisions across combined hardware and software portfolios; SaaS metrics alone are inadequate.
• Will not seek brokerage, transaction or implementation fees from any exit, combination or remediation recommendation.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a profitable industrial product you still recommended closing, and identify the decisive evidence.
2. 49 words maximum. How would you expose a supposed shared platform that actually preserves duplicate engineering?
3. 49 words maximum. Which installed-base obligation most often invalidates an apparently simple product exit?