A major food production facility increases throughput by 10% by eliminating their largest source of downtime.

Quality failures threatened a major product launch for LunchCo. After working with countless specialists and spending lots of money to implement their recommendations, the problem persisted. A team facilitated by Stroud used a problem solving approach that rejects guessing - eliminating 95% of product failures and saving the product launch.

A large customer threatened to leave if FurnitureCo could not increase delivery performance fast. A team facilitated by Stroud increased OTIF to 95+% after finding some key opportunities including changing the planning system configuration and optimizing production workflow and transport. FurnitureCo could now go back to their customer with confidence.

Sales volume had dropped by over 20% across an electric component manufacturer’s largest plant. Stroud facilitated a team that increased labour productivity by 57%. Some of the highlights included: Almost doubling the speed of a key machine; Reducing the man-hours required to operate a critical piece of equipment by a factor of ten; Involving a large section of the workforce in the initiative.

Coffee Roaster Halves Saturday Overtime, Revitalizing Employee Morale and Saving $600K/year

A molded plastics manufacturing company was dealing with major quality issues. We helped increase plant productivity by 15 percentage points in 5 weeks, and established a set of KPIs to help the team prioritize value-adding work.

The performance of a large ore processing plant was being hampered by a big problem: downstream equipment was frequently fouling up with waste from the flotation cells. We helped eliminate this problem entirely by challenging long-standing assumptions that had been accepted as truths.

An $8 billion consumer products company was facing intense price pressure due to increased competition from low cost manufacturers. Without significant cost improvements the company faced drastically reduced profits and market share. Stroud helped uncover and prioritize operations improvements across the larger sites and consolidated smaller plants, saving $63 million in labor productivity savings, $17 million raw material savings, and over $100 million in overhead costs.

Leaders at a bio-refinery were aiming to capitalize on increasing product demand. The trouble was available feed quality was decreasing. Seeing limited opportunity to raise production, the leadership team was concerned that a multi-million dollar equipment upgrade was the only option. Stroud helped the refinery meet increased demand with their existing assets, increasing output by 80% while utilizing lower-grade input feed.

A leading chemicals manufacturer had successfully driven their operating cost to best-in-class levels within the stringent quality regulations of their product. Continuing cost pressure left plant leadership uncertain how their facility would further reduce cost beyond industry benchmarks while maintaining quality. The team partnered with Stroud to challenge assumptions in their facility, reducing plant-wide labor cost by 8%.

One of the world’s largest confectionery companies faced immediate cost pressure from increased commodity prices, making near-term cost savings a necessity. The company partnered with Stroud to radically improve their supply chain performance, starting with a 50% reduction in plant waste over 8 weeks, and continuing on to a 15% increased profitability over the next 18 months.

A food and beverage company was excited about sales growth for one of their products. Leadership knew this growth would soon outpace their facility and were planning a multi-million-dollar capital expansion. But they were also curious whether an alternative existed that could be achieved faster and at a lower cost. Partnering with Stroud, the company was able to increase process throughput by 50% on their existing assets alone.