A food manufacturer growing fast without a formal planning process. We ran an operational review, then built the frameworks, applications and reporting to put S&OP in place.
| Measure | Improvement | |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery IFOT | 113% | ↑ |
| Production IFOT | 35% | ↑ |
| Supplier IFOT | 19% | ↑ |
| Stockouts | −27% | ↓ |
| Stock cover | −13% | ↓ |
| Revenue | 22% | ↑ |
S&OP, end to end.
A food manufacturer and FIAQ 2023 Queensland Manufacturer of the Year, growing faster than its planning process could support. We ran the operational review, then built the frameworks, applications and reporting to put sales and operations planning in place.
Earlee Products is a leading player in the food manufacturing industry and the FIAQ 2023 Queensland Manufacturer of the Year. They have a long history of providing high-quality food ingredients and solutions, and their dedication to quality and innovation has made them a trusted name among food manufacturers.
At Earlee, innovation and efficiency are more than buzzwords. They are the forces behind the company's commitment to excellence, which is why the conversation started where it did.
To sustain their growth and maintain their competitive edge, Earlee needed to refine their operations and integrate more robust planning processes. Michael D'Allura, their Chief Operating Officer, wanted to implement Sales and Operations Planning to lift their operational capability, and engaged Centre of Business to spearhead the project.
This is a common position for a successful manufacturer. Growth is not the problem; growth is the thing exposing the problem. Processes that worked at one volume start to strain at another, and the planning layer is usually the first place it shows.
The primary objective was to implement a comprehensive S&OP process that would streamline operations and align the sales, production and inventory management functions more closely. Four goals sat underneath it:
The transformation began with an operational review. This was a comprehensive assessment built on a series of questions and interviews with key personnel across all departments, designed to identify the existing strengths and weaknesses in Earlee's operations and to gather the insight that would shape the implementation strategy.
We start here deliberately. Implementing a planning process against an assumed picture of how a business runs is the most common way these projects fail. The interviews surface the workarounds, the informal rules and the places where the documented process and the real one diverge, and those are precisely the details that determine whether a new process survives contact with a busy week.
The build covered process, systems and reporting together rather than in sequence:
Digitalising process and activity across the business is what made the difference at every level, not just in the leadership team's reporting pack. Employees across the organisation saw better alignment between departments that had previously been working apart.
The engagement to date has produced measurable movement across delivery, inventory and revenue. Delivery IFOT improved 113%, production IFOT 35% and supplier IFOT 19%, while stockouts fell 27% and stock cover fell 13%. Revenue increased 22%.
The stockouts and stock cover figures are worth separating out, because they moved in the same direction at the same time. Reducing both together is the outcome most operations find hardest: cutting cover usually means accepting more stockouts, and eliminating stockouts usually means holding more stock. Moving both down at once indicates the planning signal itself improved, rather than one number being traded for the other.
Three qualitative changes sit behind the numbers:
This is an ongoing programme rather than a finished project. Further work continues on the specific strategies used, the challenges encountered and the detailed KPIs that measure the success of the transformation, and we will publish more of it as it progresses.
Craig has been an invaluable part of our journey at Earlee. He took the time to really understand our business, our people and the challenges we were facing, and then worked alongside us to improve the way we operate. What stood out to me was that Craig didn't just come in, make recommendations and leave. He helped us put practical systems and processes in place that our team could actually use and sustain. He also worked with our department owners to build a full suite of audit reports, creating clear accountability across the business and giving us much greater confidence in the accuracy and transparency of our data. Craig's approach is very hands-on and collaborative. He became part of the team and was always focused on getting a real outcome rather than simply delivering a report. The work has helped us build a much stronger data-driven culture and given our people better information to make decisions with more confidence and speed. I'm very happy to recommend Craig and Centre Of Business, and I'm also happy to speak directly with anyone considering working with him.
That is the position Earlee was in. Book a consultation and we'll show you where your planning process is breaking down.