Interview with Heinz Schmitz, GreenRock
“Continuous pipelines have become business-critical”
Heinz Schmitz has spent decades in senior leadership roles across the automotive industry.
Benjamin Müller
As the shift toward software-defined mobility accelerates, OEMs face rising pressure across computing architectures, supply chains, and organizational models. Heinz Schmitz from GreenRock explains where the industry stands – and what companies must fix to keep pace.
Heinz Schmitz, founder and CEO of GreenRock, advises
automotive companies on supply-chain resilience, organizational transformation,
nearshoring, and SDV-related strategy. Before founding GreenRock, he held
senior leadership roles across Tier-1 suppliers and international manufacturing
organizations, managing global operations, restructuring programs, and
technology initiatives in Europe and Asia. With long-standing experience in
e-mobility, autonomous driving, and software-defined development, he is regarded
as one of the industry’s most hands-on strategic advisors.
At the Automotive Computing
Conference 2025, he engaged with OEMs, Tier-1s, and semiconductor leaders on
the operational and structural challenges of the SDV transition. After the
event, we spoke with him in depth about the state of automotive computing, the
structural bottlenecks he sees at OEMs, and where demand for strategic support
is currently highest.
ADT: Let’s start with a deliberately wide-ranging question:
How do you assess the current state of automotive computing?
Schmitz: Automotive computing is entering a
new era. Zonal architectures with centralized high-performance computers are
becoming standard in premium segments, and OEMs are moving toward
bespoke, AI-centric SoCs. Chiplet-based designs are emerging as the most
cost-effective route to the multi-teraflop performance required by agentic AI
and software-defined vehicles. The primary driver is the rise of agentic
AI—systems that autonomously plan, prioritize, and execute tasks across vehicle
domains. These capabilities accelerate development cycles, enable continuous
feature delivery, and unlock functions that were impractical only a few years
ago. The result is a fundamental rethink of both software and hardware
architectures across the industry.
What aspects of this shift do you see as especially
decisive?
Two hardware trends stand out. First, OEM-defined SoCs:
manufacturers increasingly specify or develop their own SoCs with integrated AI
engines and accelerators tuned to their use cases. This reflects the strategic
value of AI and the need to optimize performance, power, and functional safety
across domains. Second, chiplets and advanced packaging: growing compute demand
pushes monolithic die sizes upward, reducing wafer yield and increasing cost.
Chiplet architectures combine smaller, function-optimized dies into a single
package using 2.5D and 3D packaging and high-bandwidth interconnects. The
benefits include better yield economics, faster time-to-market through IP
reuse, heterogeneous integration of CPU, GPU, NPU, I/O and memory, and greater
supply-chain flexibility.
What does this mean for the way automotive systems will
be built in the future?
The software and system implications are significant.
Chiplets and modular SoCs promote standardized interfaces and middleware,
improving portability and reuse across platforms. Functional safety and
cybersecurity remain essential; hardware and software must be co-designed to
ensure deterministic behavior, redundancy, and secure update mechanisms.
Overall, we are seeing a structural transformation rather than incremental
change. Agentic AI, SDVs, and modular hardware will drive the continued
convergence of compute and software stacks. Broader adoption of chiplet
ecosystems and tighter collaboration between OEMs, Tier-1 suppliers, and
foundries will be necessary to balance performance, cost, and safety.
You advise companies in several strategic fields. What
are the main supply-chain challenges your automotive clients bring to you
today?
We frame supply-chain resilience around two primary risk
scenarios. The first is single-source dependency. Certain
components—particularly some processors—depend on a single supplier not only
for the physical device but also for its proprietary development environment
and toolchain. That combination creates a structural vulnerability that the
industry clearly recognizes, and while new chip suppliers are emerging, it will
take time to resolve. The second is geographic concentration risk. Heavy
reliance on Southeast Asia, especially China, increases exposure to logistics,
political, and capacity shocks. This concentration makes regional sourcing an
attractive and pragmatic mitigation.
What do companies look for most when considering
nearshoring options?
When advising on nearshoring within Europe, we classify
Romania, Bulgaria, and Moldova as best-cost countries with competitive labor
and operating costs, investor-friendly conditions, and a skilled technical
workforce. These markets offer a balanced trade-off between cost and proximity
to European OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers. Leveraging deep regional knowledge and
an established network, we identify, audit, and qualify suppliers in these
countries to meet automotive standards for quality, compliance, and scalability.
Evaluated on a total cost-of-business basis—including logistics, ramp-up, and
risk factors—nearshoring can deliver both improved resilience and tangible cost
advantages. It is critical to recognize that these vehicles are not
“smartphones on wheels.” Modern cars combine complex software and electronic
systems with long-lead mechanical components such as body panels,
injection-molded parts, and axles—each governed by very different development
rhythms. Mechanical parts often require months from initial design to
production-ready tooling, which in software terms can feel like centuries. That
timing mismatch is the single biggest source of demand for our advisory
services.
Where do you see the main organizational hurdles?
The two recurring issues we observe are asynchronous
lifecycles and organizational legacy. Hardware and mechanical subsystems
require long, deterministic lead times, while software development is rapid and
iterative. Many OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers still operate with structures and
governance models designed for vehicle programs from 10 to 15 years ago, which
impede cross-domain delivery. We help clients align the long-lead hardware path
with the fast software path through a combination of processes, organizational
adjustments, and working tools. Every client is unique; there is no
one-size-fits-all solution. We begin with a status-quo assessment and gap
analysis and present our findings and proposals. A key success factor is
agreeing with the client on a roadmap—with full management buy-in—followed by a
pilot project and subsequent scaling and institutionalization.
As someone who has accompanied the Automotive Computing
Conferences for many years, what were your key takeaways from this year’s ACC?
The influx of software and SoC players into automotive is
reshaping who captures value; their technical and platform influence is
shifting bargaining power and forcing suppliers and OEMs to rethink their
offerings. Agentic AI and high-performance computing
have moved from buzzwords to engineering practice. Validation and
continuous pipelines have become business-critical, with CI/CT and scalable
SIL/HIL strategies shortening iteration cycles and validating complex SDV
architectures. Hardware trends taking hold include chiplets, zonal ECUs, and
evolving supply strategies. My sixth time at ACC confirmed it as the premier
conference for staying current and engaging with top experts.
