Excel in operations for growth
Excellence in operations is a key enabler of Sonovaʼs growth strategy. We are strengthening customer partnerships by making quality, service, and reliability clear differentiators. Through footprint optimization, increased automation, simpler processes, and systematic cost-efficient design, we are improving productivity, supply chain resilience, and delivering meaningful savings over the next four years.
Hearing care is both product-driven and fundamentally service-oriented. Customer experience therefore plays a decisive role in differentiation and loyalty. We are elevating operations — manufacturing, supply chain, and service — from a support function into a strategic growth driver, offering clear competitive differentiation and delivering tangible improvements.
Customers value experiences that are seamless, simple, and reliable — in after-sales service, repairs, customization, and support. By delivering consistently on quality, on time, and on cost, we strengthen trust, build long-term loyalty, and increase the likelihood that customers choose Sonova again at the time of repurchase.
On Quality: Proximity to customers is a critical driver of service quality, particularly in custom manufacturing and personalized services. By fully digitizing sales and post-sales interactions through a unified ecosystem, we are simplifying workflows, reducing complexity, and ensuring a more consistent customer experience across markets.
On Time: Reliable, on-time delivery is another key differentiator. We are strengthening the resilience and security of our value chain by improving interoperability across sites, increasing regionalization, and reducing geopolitical exposure by building up our regional presence.
On Cost: We are accelerating our journey toward best-in-class operations efficiency. By designating selected locations as specialist centers of excellence, expanding automation across manufacturing, and advancing value engineering, we are unlocking substantial productivity gains.
These initiatives are brought together in a targeted productivity program designed to deliver around CHF 90 million in annual cost savings by the end of its fourth year, with net savings expected from year two. The program is built on four core components:
- Footprint optimization: assigning clear mandates to each site based on its core strength — customer proximity, cost efficiency, or specialist capability — to simplify product and order flows, improve agility, and reduce structural cost.
- Process streamlining and digitalization: modernizing forecasting and planning through agentic AI, strengthening cost-effective local-for-local supply. This increases speed and agility, which customers value, while reducing working capital, and freeing resources for strategic investments.
- Automation: scaling automation where it most directly improves reliability and consistency can be a major accelerator — including manufacturing, handling and sorting, order entry, and after-sales — improving the customer experience, quality, speed, and cost.
- Value engineering: addressing one of Sonovaʼs largest untapped opportunities by reducing material costs and increasing product competitiveness across the portfolio. An optimized footprint enables a refined make-or-buy strategy, redesign to cost initiatives, and multi-sourcing approaches — including regional suppliers — to reduce risk and strengthen supply chain resilience.
Shipping transparency: why this matters for our wholesale customers
For wholesale customers, clarity and predictability are essential to running their businesses efficiently. Sonovaʼs US e-Store has long enabled customers to place orders digitally, and many value the convenience this brings to their daily operations. As their businesses continue to grow, customers have increasingly asked for greater visibility into shipping timelines for stock orders — not because service levels were lacking, but because better information enables better planning. With the introduction of real-time order visibility in the US e-Store, Sonova has taken the customer experience a step further. Customers can now see expected shipping dates, and receive consistent updates when timelines change.
This transparency allows wholesale partners to plan ahead, manage expectations proactively, and respond more confidently to their own customersʼ questions. The result is a smoother experience on both sides: fewer follow-ups, clearer communication, and a stronger sense of reliability. For wholesale customers, improved shipping visibility directly translates into better service quality — not only in their relationship with Sonova, but in how effectively they can serve their own customers every day.
Strengthening customer proximity through regional production
To bring custom-made hearing solutions closer to customers, Sonova transferred production volumes of custom rechargeable in-the-ear (ITE R) hearing aids from Vietnam to its manufacturing site in Alicante, Spain. This move strengthens regional supply for key European markets, including Germany, Italy, and France, enabling faster response times and greater flexibility. The production ramp up in Alicante was completed within just 3.5 months, supported by an intensive two-month training program for local operators. This ensured high quality standards and full operational readiness from day one.
“By relocating production closer to our European customers, we are able to shorten production times and respond more quickly to individual needs,” says Luna Martinez, Director Operations, Alicante. “Ultimately, this means people receive their personalized hearing solutions sooner — which makes a real difference in their daily lives.”
The project follows a phased implementation approach. In the first phase, finished products are distributed via Sonovaʼs distribution center in Erfurt, Germany. This will be followed by a transition to direct shipment to wholesale customers, further streamlining delivery. Combined with shorter production lead times in Alicante compared with the previous setup, this approach increases operational agility, strengthens customer proximity, and directly reduces waiting times for hearing aid wearers across Europe.