Project Experience

Cost Improvement Opportunities Emerge Through Understanding Competitor's Processes

Client Situation
Competitors' manufacturing personnel, such as plant managers, plant supervisors and production planners, have provided information that has helped our clients to achieve more efficient and profitable operations. Our client is a private label producer of refrigerated dairy products. In a category dominated by one major player, our client assumed that player was the low cost producer. Recognizing its own operations shortfalls, our client wanted to better under its competitor's processes and costs, with the ultimate goal of fine-tuning its own operations and squeezing out costs.

Fuld Approach
To that end, Fuld & Company studied the processes and production costs in three plants of this one competitor through conversations with plant managers, plant supervisors, production planning and logistics personnel. We investigated areas such as ingredients, raw materials, manufacturing processes, packaging processes and distribution practices.

Benefits and Implications
Understanding process and cost differences enabled us to identify process and cost improvement opportunities in areas such as package design and materials, materials overuse, labor and logistics practices. Ultimately, changes in these areas could yield significant profit improvements.
For more information on operations and processes in consumer products, contact Michael Sandman at msandman@fuld.com.