Outcomes
The engagement identified a 40% reduction in inventory through work-in-progress elimination across the value chain. A 50% reduction in production lead time was confirmed as feasible. Yield performance improved by 10 percentage points through closer process control, and a plan to deliver £5 million in in-year savings was agreed and put into motion. Lean workflow changes were implemented in pilot cells, a continuous improvement programme was launched across the shop floor, and new KPIs replaced the traditional cost absorption metrics that had been masking underperformance.
Background
Work-in-progress and finished goods inventories had accumulated to levels that were absorbing significant capital and masking the true performance of the operation. Production measures were actively encouraging over-production rather than flow, and process velocity through the multi-stage operation was extremely low, compounded by poor yields and excessive scrap.
A silo mentality across Operations was exacerbating the inventory problem, with functions optimising locally rather than managing the value chain as an integrated whole. The workforce had become disaffected and disengaged from improvement activity, and without effective performance management in place there was no mechanism to change that dynamic. The organisation was caught in a cycle where the metrics used to run the business were reinforcing the behaviours causing it to underperform.
Curzon Approach
Curzon structured the engagement in two connected phases: first, articulating the true operational improvement potential through rigorous current-state analysis; second, designing and piloting the interventions needed to realise it.
The current-state analysis established the business case for change in P&L and cash terms, giving leadership a clear and credible picture of the prize available before committing to a redesign programme. From this foundation, a pilot was designed to create an integrated supply chain for the highest-volume product, pulling in suppliers and joint venture partners to address the full end-to-end value chain rather than the internal operation in isolation.
A pull model was designed in detail, eliminating WIP stages along the entire supply chain to reduce inventory and accelerate flow. The physical layout and organisation of the operation were redesigned to separate dirty and clean processes, directly reducing the rework that had been inflating scrap rates and consuming capacity. Lean workflow approaches were introduced and trialled in pilot cells before broader rollout, reducing implementation risk and building the evidence base for scaling.
A cascaded performance management framework was designed and introduced to replace the cost absorption metrics that had been driving the wrong behaviours, giving the operation a set of KPIs genuinely oriented around value chain performance. A programme of Lean training and continuous improvement projects was implemented to build the shop floor capability and engagement that sustained improvement requires.
