A new lev­el of oper­a­tional pro­duc­tiv­i­ty — in just 35 weeks

Back­ground

The FMCG (fast-moving con­sumer goods) indus­try com­pris­es a wide range of fre­quent­ly pur­chased, non-durable goods, includ­ing food and bev­er­ages, per­son­al care prod­ucts, and house­hold items. These prod­ucts are char­ac­ter­ized by high vol­ume, low cost, and rapid turnover.

FMCG com­pa­nies oper­ate in a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket, employ­ing mar­ket­ing strate­gies, effi­cient sup­ply chain man­age­ment, and strate­gic pric­ing. They face chal­lenges such as chang­ing con­sumer pref­er­ences and the need for inno­va­tion. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal con­scious­ness have become impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions in the industry.

Our client is a major soft drinks man­u­fac­tur­er and dis­trib­u­tor in South­east Asia, oper­at­ing 6 pro­duc­tion plants and 10 ware­hous­es in its coun­try of oper­a­tions. It spe­cialis­es in var­i­ous types of bev­er­ages such as flavoured water, min­er­al water, fruit juices, soft drinks, Japan­ese green tea, sports and ener­gy drinks. The client is also a lead­ing sup­pli­er of dairy products.

Analy­sis

We were brought in to eval­u­ate the clien­t’s organ­i­sa­tion­al effi­cien­cy, as well as iden­ti­fy and val­i­date improve­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in the clien­t’s indi­rect func­tions. The prin­ci­pal objec­tive was to improve key busi­ness process­es and opti­mise the organ­i­sa­tion­al pro­file, sup­ple­ment­ed by a com­plete man­load review.

Dur­ing the study process, it became appar­ent that activ­i­ties need­ed realign­ing due to a merg­er that hap­pened recent­ly with under-utilised employ­ees able to take on addi­tion­al work­load; this was the sto­ry across most of the depart­ments studied.

Project Approach

Our 35-week project with the client kicked off with our Focus Process®, devel­oped over many years and based on expe­ri­ences with hun­dreds of suc­cess­ful assign­ments. Addi­tion­al­ly, best prac­tices were cus­tomised and incor­po­rat­ed into work­ing prac­tices for the departments.

This process took the clien­t’s staff through a learn­ing expe­ri­ence that pro­mot­ed com­mit­ment and own­er­ship of the new solu­tions that were being imple­ment­ed, whilst retain­ing the company’s essen­tial organ­i­sa­tion­al goals and cor­po­rate identity.

To achieve max­i­mum impact and buy-in, we set up man­age­ment action teams (MATs) led by func­tion­al heads in order to direct­ly engage the indi­vid­ual depart­ments in imple­ment­ing the required improve­ments. The MATs cov­ered the Domes­tic Com­mer­cial Oper­a­tions, Shared Ser­vices, Finance & Pro­cure­ment, and Indi­rect Man­u­fac­tur­ing departments.

“This project enabled us to make mas­sive change rapid­ly; results were achieved with­in 8 months. Renoir’s method­ol­o­gy and detailed approach to eval­u­at­ing man­ning lev­els allowed us to val­i­date our actu­al man­pow­er require­ments. As a result, we gained sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings from the project.”

First Vice Pres­i­dent Human Capital

Project Deliv­er­ables

We were able to design, devel­op and install improved work process­es for sev­er­al depart­ments. The new stream­lined work process­es reduced the empha­sis on man­u­al data entry, removed unnec­es­sary par­ties from the process­es, and clar­i­fied roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties that pre­vi­ous­ly overlapped.

Once the scope for improve­ment had been estab­lished, the focus then turned to process improve­ments. Areas of focus for man­load­ing align­ment and process improve­ments were the Mar­ket­ing and Region­al Admin­is­tra­tion func­tions which led to sig­nif­i­cant stream­lin­ing and con­se­quent head­count rationalisation.

We also sup­port­ed pro­pos­als for new struc­tures and organ­i­sa­tion pro­files to ensure that future ways of work­ing in these new depart­ments are as lean as pos­si­ble. Fol­low­ing the 80:20 rule, fur­ther major process­es were mapped, and inves­ti­ga­tions were car­ried out across the clien­t’s sales mar­ket with the high­light­ed improve­ments endorsed by man­age­ment. Work­shops pro­vid­ed a forum for process own­ers and stake­hold­ers to voice their sug­ges­tions and cri­tique the cur­rent process which fur­ther sup­port­ed the change effort.

Key Results