Accenture will be acquiring German engineering firm umlaut to further strengthen its deep engineering capabilities. The acquisition of umlaut will add more than 4,200 industry-leading engineers and consultants across 17 countries to Accenture’s Industry X services.

Industry X combines Accenture’s data and digital capabilities with deep engineering expertise to offer clients a suite of services for digitizing their engineering functions, factory floors, and plant operations, improving productivity, speeding up the transformation of hardware into software-enabled products, and allowing for faster and more flexible product development.

umlaut is a global, full-service, cross-industry, end-to-end company that offers advisory and engineering services to clients all over the world. Umlaut’s capabilities span traditional and digital engineering services, testing and validation of smart connected products, strategy, process, and organizational consulting, and hardware product development as well as software development.

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With umlaut, Accenture clients will be able to use various technologies in designing, engineering, and manufacturing of their products.

“We predicted that digital would ultimately be applied at scale to the core of a company’s business — the design, engineering and manufacturing of their products. And, for nearly a decade Accenture has been building the unique capabilities and ecosystem partnerships to combine the power of digital with traditional engineering services,” said Julie Sweet, CEO, Accenture, in a media release. “COVID-19 has accelerated the need for companies to transform these core operations, and umlaut’s leading and highly-specialized engineering services will enhance our ability to meet the accelerating demand and also continue innovating for our clients.”

“Business leaders across many industries who face the convergence of the digital and the product world are looking for a trusted partner that understands their language and can really help navigate each step of the journey to bring tangible outcomes in engineering and manufacturing,” said Marc Peter Althoff, chief technology officer, umlaut. “We are excited to bring our unique engineering and consulting culture, deep industry know-how and subject matter expertise to Accenture Industry X and jointly create the capabilities and scale to help clients successfully transform.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that most companies’ operations and supply chains are far from resilient or flexible enough to respond to crises. Digital technologies can help mitigate disruptions by, for example, enabling a fast switch to operate factories remotely or providing near real-time insights about changing market demands. In addition, companies are increasingly expected to operate more responsibly and contribute to a circular economy through the development of more sustainable products.