28% reduction of non-productive staffing
Over 20% reduction in overtime


Strategic Intent

Improve competitive position of a primary division in the face of increasing foreign competition by significantly reducing costs


Situation

  • Fortune 1,000 global manufacturer/marketer of specialty chemicals
  • Target division supplies biopolymers to pharmaceutical/food industries
  • Division considered a primary portfolio asset but failing to meet production and financial forecasts
  • Escalating offshore competition and corresponding cost pressures
  • Growing supply chain and transportation costs
  • New general manager seeks help to accelerate change.

Issues and Barriers

  • Lack of strong operational management and front-line supervisory leadership
  • Lingering negative cultural effect from recent heavy staff turnover
  • No effective systems in place to address process issues and bottlenecks
  • Right-first-time (quality) output only 80%
  • Poor communication between departments creates silo environment.
  • Ineffective training and succession planning models

Key Implementations

  • Develop new contractor planning and usage controls
  • Implement reorganization and new staffing plans
  • Deploy strict overtime checklist and approval process
  • Redesign and implement new production processes and metrics
  • New daily production meeting and flash reporting to focus on production metrics, financial performance vs. budget and planned maintenance
  • Align all managers and supervisors with GM’s goals

Results

Improve competitiveness

Primary Expense Reductions

This initiative generates a year-one ROI of nearly four to one, enabling the new general manager to assume prompt and profitable control of his division operations.

  • 28% reduction of non-productive staffing
  • Over 20% reduction in overtime
  • Cut contractor labor expense 40%
  • Fixed labor cost reduced 18%

Client Perspective

These guys (Brooks) got us better results — and did it quicker — than we could have done it by ourselves.
— Director of Operations


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