Kearney acquires German industrial design firm TEAMS

Global management consulting firm Kearney has acquired TEAMS, a German industrial design firm with four offices worldwide.

Founded in 1956, TEAMS helps companies design new industrial products. The concepts of its designers and engineers can be found in products from Bosch, Dräger, Kärcher, Siemens and numerous other companies, and work has won more than 1,000 design awards in Germany and internationally.

With the acquisition of TEAMS, Kearney extends its traditional strategic and organisational capabilities in product excellence to also include design and engineering’s domains.

As part of the deal, TEAMS will continue to operate independently (with the tagline ‘a Kearney company’ added to its logo). Its 120-strong team across four design studios (Chicago, Hamburg, Shanghai and Stuttgart) will become part of Kearney’s Product Excellence and Renewal Lab, a practice that advises companies on product strategy.

“We're very excited to welcome TEAMS with the Kearney family,” said Bharat Kapoor, Kearney partner and global lead of the Product Excellence and Renewal Lab.

“The industrial and product design market TEAMS serves is big and growing quickly. We have seen extremely favourable responses from clients to the ideas put forward by TEAMS’ product designers and engineers. What they do is a terrific complement to our focus of helping companies reinvent products to meet evolving customer expectations, or to achieve internal goals like greater profitability and sustainability.”

The deal is Kearney’s first this year. The Chicago headquartered consulting firm doesn’t close many deals however, with only five completed in the past dozen years. Earlier acquisitions were: Optano (2022), Prokura (2021),Cervello (2019), and Quintel (2011).

Meanwhile, for TEAMS, the joining of forces with the leading global strategic consulting firm will enable its team to work on high-impact projects and expand its footprint.

“We love working on the creative aspects of industrial design, and look forward to continuing to do that on behalf of our long-standing clients,” said Klaus Baumgartner, managing partner at TEAMS. “At the same time, Kearney bring a completely different kind of expertise to the work of product improvement and renewal. In joint engagements, we’ve already seen how beneficial our joint expertise is for our clients.”

Globally, Kearney has more than 55 offices in 40 countries. The 100+ year-old firm was previously known as A.T. Kearney.