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From One Month to One Day:
Mabe’s Big Shift in Product Development

Mabe-1

Location

Americas

Industry

Home Appliances

Annual Revenue

$4 billion

Engagement

Consultancy/PALMA Software

Executive Summary

Mabe has built a faster, more agile, and more resilient operation, designed to grow without adding complexity
As a global leader in home appliances, Mabe faced mounting pressure to respond faster to market demands while managing a vast and growing product portfolio. The solution wasn’t more people—it was less complexity and more composability. With support from Modular Management, Mabe restructured its operations around a modular product architecture, powered by PALMA®. This shift enabled configuration-driven product development, streamlined planning and release, of products and a business model ready to scale without added cost or chaos.

Key Results

90 %
Reduction in product data setup effort
47 %
Reduction in unique part numbers
 
x 30
Faster release of BOMs for new SKUs

Business Challange

Mabe’s success had introduced its biggest challenge: complexity. Across eight production sites, thousands of SKUs spanned brands, countries, and customer preferences. With acquisitions, overlapping platforms, and ad hoc product launches, Mabe’s operations were slowing down. For example, one factory managed 654 SKUs, introducing and phasing out 40+ every month.

Manual processes couldn’t keep up. Teams were relying on Excel and disconnected systems, and factories were split between high-volume efficiency and low-volume flexibility—all in the same space. Adding people wasn’t the answer. What Mabe needed was a new architecture: one that allowed variety, but only where it added value.

 

What Was Holding Mabe Back:

  • Older products that came with acquisitions

  • New platforms added without removing the old ones

  • Designs created for specific regions or brands.

    At the same time, market expectations were changing. Mabe faced pressure to:

  • Launch new products faster
  • Respond more quickly to customer needs
  • Reduce cost of every new SKU

Goals For the Transformation

Mabe’s transformation began with a bold question: What if we could grow and offer more variety—without making everything more complicated?

Working closely with Modular Management, Mabe embraced a long-term shift from traditional, SKU-based development to a modular product architecture. Together, the teams restructured product categories to be built from standardized modules—each with a defined purpose, limited variants, and reusable interfaces. This allowed Mabe to generate wide product variety from a controlled, rationalized architecture.

The transformation started with the most complex category: free-standing cooking appliances. Rather than redesigning one SKU at a time, Mabe tackled the entire platform as a configurable system. Modules were selected based on customer value, operational efficiency, and long-term adaptability. The strategy expanded into other product lines—washing machines, exhaust hoods, refrigerators, water heaters—applying the same principles to scale modularity across the business.

  Transition from a non-modular product lineup to a streamlined modular architecture

The results were measurable—and replicable. For example, Mabe’s largest cooking factory was able to consolidate 27 production lines into fewer, more efficient setups by standardizing how products were assembled. Configuration rules replaced one-off engineering. Manual work dropped significantly.

Most importantly, this was not a one-off project. Modular Management helped Mabe embed modular thinking into its product development DNA. Today, every new platform starts with modular product architecture—a repeatable system that balances customization with control.

Want to learn how Mabe extended this transformation with digital configuration?
Explore the Mabe PALMA case story →

How Mabe Achieve Business Results that Scale

From 2015 to 2025, Mabe doubled its revenue—not by adding complexity, but by eliminating it. By standardizing variation and embedding configuration into the product lifecycle, the company created a flexible, scalable product system.

How the Transformation Delivered Results:

The success of Mabe’s transformation wasn’t just in the numbers—it was in the way work got done across the business. Here’s how modular architecture and configuration-based development improved core processes:

  • Product Planning:

    With PALMA at the center, Mabe treats every SKU as a configuration of reusable module variants. The system instantly checks if a new SKU can be built from existing modules and enforces rules for country, brand, and performance, reducing errors and guesswork. Today, product planning is consolidated across Mabe, GE Appliances, and Haier for visibility, consistency, and speed.

  • Top-Down Design: 

    Mabe begins every design with a global product structure, reusing existing module variants and creating new parts only when necessary. This approach reduces errors and ensures consistency. PALMA’s integration with Windchill automates product structures, eliminating manual input

  • Cost Management: 

    Costing data from existing modules is reused, enabling quick portfolio-wide updates and reducing SKU costing time by 80%. Automated rules ensure accurate decisions from the start. This minimizes overhead and financial risk.
  •  New Product or Supplier Start-Up
    Teams audit parts before production to prevent issues and quickly identify affected SKUs when changes occur. This visibility enables fast, consistent updates. It also supports smarter sourcing and production decisions.

 

Key Outcomes Include

  • SKU lead time reduced from 1 month to 1 day

  • 90% reduction in product data setup effort

  • 80% less effort required for product maintenance

  • 47% reduction of overall count of unique part numbers

  • 63% reduction in stamping tools

  • Supported 2X revenue increase over 10 years
MABE-IMAGES
Multiple refrigerator models (ranging from basic to premium) built from a shared set of standardized components to maximize efficiency and flexibility. 

"With PALMA, we don’t just launch products faster, we make smarter decisions from day one. It’s clarity, control, and confidence in one platform”.

 

maria mata-1

María Mata

Modular Architecture Leader | Mabe

Why It Matters

Configurability That Drives Real Business Impact

Mabe’s journey shows what’s possible when configurability becomes the foundation of product strategy. By rethinking its product architecture and implementing a digital model with PALMA®, Mabe created a smarter, leaner, and faster operation.

This approach didn’t just improve operations—it gave Mabe the capability to grow without adding cost, risk, or overhead. For any manufacturer facing the limits of scale and SKU sprawl, Mabe’s transformation offers a clear lesson:
Strategic configurability is how product variety becomes a strength—not a burden.

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