Case Study

Realigned Operations for Product Flow for a $75M Specialty Plastics Packaging Manufacturer

"After reviewing the operations of the organization, in alignment with future production needs and sales pipelines, a manufacturing shop floor reconfiguration project was embarked on resulting in improved performance, delivery, and profitability"

Situation

  • The client was a specialty packaging and plastics manufacturer owned by a mid-market private equity firm
  • One of the company’s manufacturing plants was underperforming in terms of its operational and profitability goals
  • The manufacturing plant suffered from a combination of complex, short-run orders and products and an inefficient layout driven by its legacy approaches
  • Members of SLKone were asked to perform an assessment and develop a plan to improve performance and profitability within the manufacturing operations

Bespoke Solutions

  • SLKone performed a deep-dive analysis of the organization including customer profitability, production run performance, defect analysis, and product flow
  • Customer profitability and production order analysis yielded a long tail of low-profitability, high complexity customers requiring rationalization
  • Product production flow and defect analysis illustrated poor plant layout and equipment issues created large profitability and production inefficiencies

Leading With Results

  • Improved product on-time-delivery: The reconfiguration of the plant layout allow for decreased production times and improved quality resulting in improved on-time-delivery metrics
  • Profitability Improved by over 20%: Identifying low-profit, high complexity customers and orders, and placing fees for setup and minimal run quantities resulted in over 20% of profitability improvement for these customers
  • Additional product capacity: The improvement in product flow and complexity reduction freed up additional capacity to take on part transfers from other facilities with capacity constraints leading to overall company profitability improvements
Case studies and expertise may represent projects and engagements performed by SLKone team members prior to their employment at SLKone