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Kimberly Borden

Senior PartnerChicago

Serves clients in the Aerospace & Defense and Automotive & Assembly Practices, focusing on strategy, operations, and transformational change

Kimberly Borden has experience serving clients in our Aerospace & Defense and Automotive and Assembly Practices on issues related to operations and strategy, with a focus on product and go-to-market development, supplier management, and transformational change. Her recent work includes:

  • Aerospace operations transformation, including commercial insights and strategy development—followed by operations cost reduction and simplification through Lean principles applied to program costs, design, and manufacturing. Resulted in 30% cost reduction and 60% timing reduction 
  • Complexity reduction and design optimization in the white goods industry, followed by a global product development transformation, which included organization, process, and performance management alignment. 30% reduction in costs identified, with 60-80% complexity reduction
  • Design-to-Value transformation in the industrial products space.—a large transformative program that taught the skills of portfolio management, consumer insights, competitive comparison, and supply chain and cost optimization to a large consumer and trade organization over a two-year period, yielding substantial savings (~12%) and growth (10% increase in new product development). Over 600 people trained and coached, allowing for a significant mindset shift in approach to product development and supplier management
  • Go-to-Market transformation in the automotive industry. Led a large, complex automotive and industrial organization through a complete Go-to-Market transformation, including portfolio management, testing, and new product development process optimization. Maintained a strong focus on execution, talent building, and mindset shifts through implementation to ensure sustainability
  • Led a turnaround project in the commercial vehicle industry. This focused on sales growth (identified 10% incremental growth), overhauled the product development and product management processes while building deep capabilities internally. Developed an executive performance management system including metrics, tracking, and meeting cadence 
  • Large commercial purchasing cost reduction project using tools such as Cleansheet Solution, rapid re-pricing, and design-to-cost to reduce costs by 10%. Also focused on building capabilities over the long term and implementing cost assessment and management tools

Prior to joining McKinsey, Kimberly spent 11 years in the automotive industry working for both BorgWarner Automotive and DaimlerChrysler in profit and loss statement (P&L) management, product development, program management, and supplier management. At Daimler, she spent two years in a management training program, and at BorgWarner, she worked with European, Asian, and US OEMs to launch various programs. She was responsible for over $200M in program P&L, and was part of an executive leadership team that turned around an unprofitable division into a record performer.

Published work

The future of US manufacturing is hiding in plain sight,” McKinsey & Company, December 2022

The future is now: Unlocking the promise of AI in industrials,” McKinsey & Company, December 2022

The Titanium Economy: Emerging stronger in the face of disruption,” McKinsey & Company, November 2022

The Titanium Economy: Capturing opportunities in the energy transition,” McKinsey & Company, November 2022

The Titanium Economy: How to overcome the challenge of filling high-quality jobs,” McKinsey & Company, October 2022

The Titanium Economy: An introduction,” McKinsey & Company, October 2022

Education

University of Michigan
MBA with distinction

Oakland University
MSE, summa cum laude

University of Michigan
BSE, mechanical engineering