For every €1 invested in cost engineering, companies get €10 to €100 back. So why do most still miss the savings? Because they start too late.

Severin Heimrath, Managing Director at AWS Innovation Partners, has spent 15 years inside manufacturing organizations and keeps seeing the same pattern: treating cost engineering as a procurement tool instead of a design tool. By the time a product reaches negotiation, 80-90% of its costs are already determined because engineering decisions, tolerances, and supplier choices have locked in the cost structure.

In this episode, Severin shares what actually drives results:

☑️ Why cost engineering must start in early product development

☑️ How centralized data and cross-functional collaboration outperform Excel estimates

☑️ Where AI helps and where human expertise still wins

☑️ And how leading teams consistently achieve 10–100x ROI

The technology exists, and the methods are proven. The only question is: are you starting early enough?

For 35 years, Dr. Rainer Balbach built automotive supply chains for Daimler AG Mercedes-Benz across Germany, India, Singapore, Egypt, and Russia. From deep-drawing aluminum to high-pressure die casting that replaced 150 sheet metal parts with one, he witnessed firsthand how innovation struggles against organizational resistance.

In this episode, Rainer tells host Sasan Hashemi what nobody wants to admit: Europe stopped promoting entrepreneurs and started promoting controllers. The engineers who built empires were replaced by consultants who worship spreadsheets. Meanwhile, Singapore became a paradise for innovation.

The technology isn't the problem. Europe has world-class engineering. The problem is cultural: we stopped acting like entrepreneurs and started acting like auditors.

We're not failing because we can't innovate. We're failing because we won't.

Germany's economy is losing momentum while many European peers continue to grow. What needs to change?

In this episode, Sasan Hashemi speaks with Dr. Andreas Cornet, former McKinsey senior partner with 30+ years in the automotive industry. They discuss why Germany may need an economic pivot, how "Shift and Lift" can guide investment and productivity, and where energy policy and regulation hold the biggest impact. The discussion is led through 30 years in consulting, from systems thinking to constructive dissent - and reflections on where past transformations could have gone further.

Follow the podcast along for monthly conversations with insiders and innovators as we explore where cost management and manufacturing are heading. Find the video episodes on our YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@Beyond_Cost

From the factory floor to the boardroom, Thomas Dieringer has seen what it takes to build software that manufacturers actually use.

In this episode of Beyond Cost, host Sasan Hashemi sits down with Thomas Dieringer, an entrepreneur and business angel with 20 years of experience founding B2B software companies in cost engineering. Mr. Dieringer shares what separates successful software companies from those that fail, from navigating complex sales cycles to managing investors and knowing when to pivot.

Follow the podcast along for monthly conversations with insiders and innovators as we explore where cost management and manufacturing are heading.

Is Germany losing its most powerful industry right in front of our eyes? In this premiere episode of the Beyond Cost podcast, Tset CEO & Co-founder Sasan Hashemi sits down with Andreas Hartmann, former board member at ZF Friedrichshafen AG, to explore what's really at stake for the German automotive industry. As electric vehicles reshape the global market and Chinese automakers surge forward, we ask the tough questions: Why did Germany underestimate the speed of the EV shift? Can traditional OEMs survive in a software-driven, battery-powered market? And most importantly, will Germany still be a global automotive leader in 20 years? Follow along for monthly conversations with insiders and innovators as we explore where the manufacturing world is heading and who is getting it right.