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Case · Transformation

An ambitious new build brought up to speed — on standard in five months

+70%

Productivity in the preparation department, in nineteen weeks.

Sector

Food, fresh processing

Scale

Revenue over €400 million

Our role

Orchestrating the transformation across five workstreams

Duration

Six months intensive, then embedding

Pillar

Mechanisation & implementation

The situation

A Dutch fresh food processor had invested hundreds of millions in a new, highly mechanised production footprint. The ambition was high and the technology was in place.

What was not yet in place was the pace. Flow between departments lagged behind standard, bottlenecks arose, and across the whole factory around a fifth more staff were needed per period than budgeted. A start-up of this scale takes more than technology — and that was exactly what was still missing.

The bottleneck

The daily breakdowns cost more than output alone: they cost confidence in the new way of working. And because everyone was busy delivering today, nobody got round to tomorrow.

That is the point at which a technology supplier comes to check its machine and a strategy firm writes a report — and at which neither changes anything on the floor.

Our approach

Four phases, from the first analysis to embedding

Phase 1

Start from the bottleneck

Twenty interviews and three workshops with the people who work there every day, resulting in one fact-based picture supported internally: the factory could handle this, and this was what it took. Twenty-seven initiatives, prioritised on impact against complexity, each with a quantified problem statement and a baseline.

Phase 2

Let the existing technology do what it was meant for

No new investment. Flow back to standard, the large flows via a shorter route, and a production schedule that is practically achievable rather than theoretically optimal.

Phase 3

Get it working on the floor — through their own people

Five workstreams, each led by one of the client’s department managers with a co-lead from our team. That division of roles was a deliberate choice: the implementation belongs to them, we provide the support. The turning point came when production management, together with us, began steering the department heads on productivity twice a week. From then on, things moved fast. In addition: a control room that monitors flow in real time, a flow management team that solves problems on the day they arise, and a training programme that more than tripled the number of training sessions for critical roles — with in-house trainers.

Phase 4

On board until it delivers

A weekly steering group, a daily start at the board at 8:30, an operational meeting twice a week on one KPI dashboard, and for each initiative a charter with a baseline, a measurement method and a named owner.

The result

Direct labour in the following year’s budget

actual previous year

↓

−13.5%

at unchanged volume

Productivity, preparation

75% of standard

↓

113%

of standard output per labour hour, in nineteen weeks

Productivity loss per week

realised run rate

↓

−93%

no productivity loss budgeted for the following year

Material losses per week

realised run rate

↓

−92%

largest saving in the budget’s margin build-up

Measurement note

All operational figures come from the client’s weekly KPI dashboard, not from our own measurement, and are results realised afterwards.

Productivity is output per labour hour, measured against the standard per department set in the budget; the +70% refers to the preparation department over nineteen weeks. Productivity loss is the reported weekly cost variance from producing below standard; the annual amount mentioned is a run rate based on the final weeks, not a realised annual saving. Retention is the share of employees who were also present the previous week, per department, over the final weeks compared with the weeks before the start.

The 13.5% lower direct labour is the difference between the budgeted direct personnel costs — permanent and flexible — in the consolidated budget for the next financial year and the actual figure for the year before, with net revenue equal in both years.

The material losses — overuse and shrinkage combined — are a target set beforehand in the site’s budget for the next year, not a realised figure. The starting point is the realised run rate of material losses over the last five periods of the year before. In that budget’s margin build-up, this item is the largest positive contribution at 1.7 percentage points, and the organisation is carrying out this improvement path itself.

Why it kept working

What remained when we left: a daily start at the board, an operational meeting on one dashboard, a control room with a job description and escalation procedures, a flow management team with its own role, in-house trainers with a continuous learning plan, work instructions for the critical tasks, and master data management with an owner. And most importantly: confidence in the system was back, as was confidence in the people who have to work with it.

None of these things is technology. Together they are the reason the technology kept working — and they all run on the client’s own people.

The moment we knew we could let go: when the operational teams made a sport of beating each other’s productivity. That it worked could also be seen in the people: weekly staff retention rose over the same period from 71–80% to 91–96%, in all five departments at once.

But the proof is not in our final report; it is in the client’s. The budget for the following year includes 13.5% less direct labour than was actually spent the year before, at the same volume. No productivity loss is budgeted any more. And for material losses, a target has been set at a fraction of the realised run rate — making it the largest positive item in that budget’s entire margin build-up.

The final piece came from the client. When we left, the remaining overuse was still open; what was in place was the mechanism to tackle it. The organisation took on that task itself and committed it to its own budget — with exactly that item as the largest saving in the budget’s margin build-up. An improvement the controller adopts is an improvement that lasts.