Improving productivity to mitigate pricing pressures from emerging markets

A leading global pharmaceutical company’s growth in demand from emerging markets for off-patent products had created the risk of reduced margins as a result of pricing pressures.

The client challenged us to support the site leadership team to accelerate the delivery of productivity benefits that would mitigate the impact of these pricing challenges.

Our own experience, in our own company, has shown that a high level of employee engagement is the only way to sustain new ways of working.

• We engaged staff to help them identify and then implement improvement opportunities.
• Long lead times, the over delivery of materials and poor communication between isolated departments, were all contributing to cost pressures.

Engaged staff ensured changes were embedded quickly

• Our focus on creating high levels of staff engagement helped the breakdown of internal silos and allowed people to start to work together.
• We worked closely with the client’s lead change agent to provide coaching throughout the transformation process. 

By the end of the three months significant results had been achieved:

• Materials delivery lead time was reduced from 36 hours to 4 hours
• Service to manufacturing lines was improved, with the returns to warehouse from production reduced by 60%
• As a result, operating costs reduced by £600,000 per annum allowing margins to be sustained within the new pricing regime

In the full case study, we cover the improvements in more detail, you can get a copy by clicking below.