Case Studies

Background

This North American company manufactures and packages “own brand” breakfast cereals for leading retailers in USA and Canada. The US site had been neglected by the parent and subsequently the relative financial performance of the business was falling behind expectations. The response of the local Management Team was to strip out cost at every opportunity without recognising the negative impact that would result. The Operations Team were de-motivated by the lack of resource to manage and maintain the facility. Clive Whitegate was asked to prepare an Operations Improvement Plan, rebuild the site Operations Team and coach the Team to increase output to support the sales growth predicted.

The Solution

No effective planning was in place. Understandable given that the demand forecast was kept secret by the sales team, load and capacity was an alien concept and therefore finance were completely in the dark and therefore had to guess forecasts based on historic performance.

Sales and Operations Planning was implemented through a multi-disciplinary team and as all available information was modelled through newly established processes significantly improved clarity was achieved. Given this clarity management action to address challenges was thought through and results of good planning and management delivered a 30% increase in output. This clearly contributed significantly to the financial improvement required by the Private Equity Investors.