Fourteen per cent out of the cost of production.

The situation

A vertically integrated pig farming and specialty meat business was losing money every year. Production and supply chain problems had been treated as separate issues for years, with different people looking at each. Fixes on the farm were undone further down the chain, and the other way round, so the loss came back year after year.

What I did

I looked at production and the supply chain together, as one system. The diagnosis came first: where the cost of producing each unit was really being made, from the farm through processing to the customer, and which problems were causing the others.

The fixes then ran as one programme in a deliberate order, so each change built on the one before rather than fighting it. Every action had a named owner. To stop the business sliding back once the programme ended, I set up a regular operating routine. It was a fixed rhythm of review that kept the numbers in front of the people who could act on them.

What changed

The total cost of production came down by 14%, and the business moved from a recurring annual loss to sustained profitability.