The client is a multinational industrial and technology group that designs and delivers plants, systems, equipment, and automation solutions for industries including pulp and paper, hydropower, metals, and environmental technologies, with operations spanning approximately 280 locations worldwide.
The company’s market-leading position in one of its core business streams was under threat due to increasingly aggressive competitor offerings, compounded by internal challenges related to operational inefficiencies impacting on the commercial offering and business streams bottom line.
Magellan was engaged to assess the operating model, pinpoint performance bottlenecks, and implement targeted levers and a transformation program to boost production efficiency while establishing a sustainable and digital-ready operating model.
The diagnostic identified:
- Structural performance gaps across the end-to-end value chain.
- Planning and scheduling processes were largely reactive.
- Execution lacked clear priorities.
- Performance management relied predominantly on lagging financial KPIs.
- Lead times were long and highly variable, while some workstations experienced idle time despite significant backlogs.
These factors were the root causes of underperformance, a siloed culture, and tensions between departments.
Magellan’s objective was to restore operational fundamentals, establish a sustainable performance management system that improves reliability from sales demand through engineering and production, enables data-driven decision-making, and increases productivity by 30%.
Transforming Operations into a Unified, Data-Driven Performance Engine
1. Engineering
60% of work orders had to be designed and tailored made to client specification. This was the role of the Engineering department.
Magellan reorganized departmental processes, implemented new management tools, best practices, and governance mechanisms. This brought clarity and control, established clear priorities and measurable individual & departmental objectives.
The new operating model unlock performance. The new KPIs demonstrated efficiency & output acceleration while clarity and control brought together Engineering & Production resulting in an Efficient Production & planning process.
As a result, engineering transitioned from reactive order handling to a controlled, forward-looking, and innovation-driven delivery model fully aligned with production requirements.
2. Planning
Magellan reorganized Planning into the central coordination function, connecting demand, engineering release, and production capacity.
This new process & tool were underpinned by a weekly validation instance and action resolving variance root causes
The single and integrated planning strengthened alignment across functions and improved day-to-day decision-making.
Short-term firm schedules replaced frequent replanning, improved synchronization and reduced rework. It clarified weekly priorities, offered stability and unified all organizations as all departments collaborate toward shared objectives.
3. Production
Prior to the project, production execution was dominated by firefighting. Frequent changes, unbalanced workloads, while limited visibility of constraints disrupted flow across workstations and reduced overall reliability.
Production efforts focused on improving the existing operating model to restore execution, discipline and increase throughput by stabilizing daily operations and actively managing bottlenecks.
Magellan’s team reinforced shop floor execution by implementing rigorous weekly production planning, a structured and efficient daily management system supported by tools highlighting daily constraints and bottlenecks.
The new operating model enabled teams to proactively anticipate issues, prioritize actions and address deviations in real time. As execution stabilized, production shifted from stop-and-go operations to a discipline and flow-oriented model. Workstation utilization rose, throughput increased, and reliance on overtime was eliminated. The department now consistently delivers top-tier operational and financial KPIs.
4. Sales
First Magellan developed a new approach & tools integrating and better aligning commercial / client’s priorities with operational reality. This was essential as it provided global and detailed Sales & Operating visibility to executives and managers.
Then, quick-wins and the operational transformation rapidly reduced the production life cycle. The new integrated operating model allowed Sales to adapt its offering to reflect new operational efficiency and propose very competitive & reliable offers.
The new production efficiency was so high that it shifted focus from Production to Sales: it needed to accelerate the order intake to work at full capacity and increase the business EBITDA. Magellan then launched a third initiative: a sales targeting tool was developed to identify existing or potential customers with products approaching replacement, enabling proactive demand generation aligned with available capacity.
- Organization & culture
- A new streamlined & efficient organization with
- Integrated tools & common routines across each department
- Digital embedded solutions in daily operations, enabling real-time visibility and faster decision-making.
- A new operating culture turned towards performance, underpinned by a unified organization where all departments collaborate toward shared objectives
- A new streamlined & efficient organization with
- Engineering
- Wiped out a 3-month backlog and now running 10 weeks ahead
- 98% plan-to-delivery accuracy
- Design output +33% vs. target
- Turnaround time slashed by 80% (3 months → 2 weeks)
- Automation cut design cycle up to 72% for key products
- Planning & Production
- A single and integrated planning tool for the whole organization
- End-to-end lead time: reduced by 60% from order confirmation to delivery.
- +52% productivity in the focused bottlenecks
- Global output increased by 42% in 5 months
- 29% reduction in cycle time for the complex product
- Production efficiency is so high that Sales needs to accelerate the order intake.
- Sales
- Enabled sales to offer best-in-market turnaround times.
- Shifted from reactive management of production delays to proactive commercial actions that fuel the operating model and increase BU EBITDA.
- Leveraged recent historical order to identify high-potential customer targets, with the potential to double the annual order book even under conservative conversion assumptions.