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
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
