Business challenge
Our client is one of the largest producers of frozen foods and branded fruit juices in Central Eastern Europe. It has 4 plants and ca. 1600 employees, located in Poland.
Together with its new Private Equity Owner, a leading private equity firm, the client developed an aggressive growth strategy (value creation plan). In order to be able to realize the targets linked to the growth strategy, the client realized that a significant transformation of its Supply Chain set-up was required.
Process
A feasibility study highlighted significant operational improvement opportunities across all areas of the Supply Chain. Together with client taskforces a series of root cause & impactability workshops were organized. In these workshops the teams agreed on solution levers & enablers.
Asset Life Cycle Management
The teams identified a significant potential for improved performance across the primary process of production, maintenance and materials management. The focus was on reduced downtime and changeovers, increased material yield, building quality maintenance systems and improved managerial skills of the first line supervisors.
Supply Chain Excellence
The teams re-designed the planning processes to reduce logistics cost resulting from low plan stability and low forecast accuracy. A more integrated planning process immediately delivered optimized supply chain performance and significant productivity improvements through reduced inventory and improved warehouse management processes.
Variable Cost Optimization
Besides the logistics cost the teams identified another are for improvement; the proliferation of SKU’s with the resulting (high) cost per production unit. Reduction of product portfolio complexity and better defined NPD processes generated immediate release of cash and resources.
Program & Performance Management
Since the proposed changes came from the client task forces the ownership for the successful change was clear. To enable the client task forces to become and remain successful a new management system was installed with clearly defined KPI’s, Roles & Responsibilities and structured planning and review meetings.