Case Study - Interim Management
This case study documents an interim management job to consolidate purchasing expenditure across Europe that had previously been fragmented amongst the client's plants.
Client
Global Petrochemicals Giant
Assignment Type
Pan European Purchasing of Consumer and Industrial Packaging
Duration of Interim Management Job
Over 1 year.
Client's Return on Investment
Ten times or 1,000 %
Background
The client had previously purchased the consumer and industrial packaging category on a country by country basis (across 12 sites), and wanted to maximise potential savings by consolidating purchasing strategies for key industrial packaging and consumer packaging sub-categories across Europe, including:
- Steel drums (industrial packaging)
- Plastic (HDPE) Bottles (consumer packaging)
- Pallets (industrial packaging)
- Cartons / Cardboard Boxes (industrial packaging)
- Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBCs) (industrial packaging)
To do so, a multi-disciplinary team was established, working within a formal purchasing programme management organisation. The team comprised of:
- Category Project Manager
- Executive Interim Purchasing Manager for Packaging
- Executive Interim Industrial Packaging Technical Specialist
- Project Administrator
The client had very specific requirements for the executive interim purchasing manager, all of which were met by the executive interim purchasing manager provided by us. This included requirements for experience of:
- Packaging category purchasing management
- Strategic purchasing (e.g. AT Kearney / Cap Gemini Ernst & Young) methodology
- e-sourcing
- Formal project management systems (e.g. Prince 2)
- FMCG industry
- Oil industry
- Multi-cultural & multi-lingual capability
The client's requirement for an executive interim industrial packaging technical specialist was met by providing an executive interim manager who had previously done the same role for the client's main competitor.
Dimensions of the Category Purchasing Interim Management Job
- Pan European
- $100m - direct spend
Benefits Achieved During the Interim Management Job
- Built active working relationships with pan European stakeholders
- Base lined pan-European packaging category spend
- Prioritised sub-categories for individual attention
- Developed approaches specific to each sub-categories including e-Sourcing and value engineering
- Reviewed specifications for packaging value engineering opportunities
- Implemented key packaging value engineering specification changes
- Pioneered the use of the client's e-Sourcing platform (without consultancy support from the platform provider) in that part of the client's business
- Successfully consolidated sub-category expenditure across Europe
- Successfully applied e-Sourcing to two sub-categories
- Delivered double digit savings of 11-50% for each sub-category except one where savings alone were Euros 1.5m.
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