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Operations

We help consumer-packaged-goods companies increase margins by achieving operational excellence while maintaining customer satisfaction.

What we do

In response to consumer demand and competitive pressure, consumer-packaged-goods companies are calling on their operations functions to do more with less. At the same time, operations need to stay agile to support innovation and manage complexity.

Our Approach

We help our clients achieve these goals in many core areas, including the following:

Operations strategy

We work with leading consumer-goods companies to define long-term operations-transformation journeys and help build strategies and organizations that lead to commercial growth.

Operations digitization

Autonomous planning, digital procurement, and Industry 4.0 applications create significant opportunity to achieve the next horizon of operations excellence. We help organizations align their operating models, capabilities, and culture to the digital age to ensure a successful and sustainable digital transformation.

Complexity optimization

We help companies master complexity by distinguishing the “good complexity” that excites customers and drives incremental sales, from the “bad complexity” that stands only to increase inventory and make the supply chain less agile, as a result, driving growth through a combination of “market back” processes—such as assortment—and supply forward transformation—such as supply-chain optimization.

Design to value and growth

We help clients develop authentic, human-focused, and charismatic products, services, and experiences. Our approach to product development integrates market analytics, competitive intelligence, and an understanding of suppliers with deep consumer insights and design capabilities.

Next-generation procurement

To offset the effects of commoditization, we support our clients with broad category strategies that take a total-cost-of-ownership perspective to sourcing. Our offerings include risk management, lean sourcing, and value-chain optimization in collaboration with suppliers.

Manufacturing and sourcing

Our manufacturing experts work with consumer-goods companies to build manufacturing networks that are flexible, responsive, innovative, and resilient. We empower clients to take advantage of new technology and digital capabilities to achieve higher performance at a lower cost with more agility.

Customer-centric and omnichannel supply chains

We help clients optimize the flow of goods through segmentation, improved planning, adoption of lean principles, and increased supply chain collaboration. Our distinctive approach to shaping customer-centric and omnichannel supply chains helps clients achieve higher service levels, leaner inventories, and lower costs.

Zero-based budgeting

We leverage our zero-based budgeting 360 tool along with the Anaplan planning solution to drive fast, agile, at-scale, and sustainable productivity improvements for our clients.

Featured Capabilities

Proprietary operations benchmarks and databases assess operational performance and digital maturity, including Supply Chain 360° and Manufacturing 360° assessments, consumer operations benchmarking, proprietary supplier and pricing databases, as well as global best practice libraries in purchasing and supply chain management.

Operations solutions offer a wide range of customizable tools, e.g., SC Designer, which provides scenario-based network optimization and instant evaluation, or the Agricultural Commodity Research Engine, which transforms how ingredients are sourced.

QuantumBlack harnesses data, analytics and design to give organizations a clear path to making distinctive, sustainable and significant improvements to their performance.

McKinsey Design helps clients design change that matters by spotting opportunities in unmet customer needs, co-creating breakthrough products and services, and making organizations more innovative and agile.

Featured Experts

Mike Doheny
Senior Partner, Atlanta
Transforms performance for consumer and logistics companies, driving growth and productivity to improve financial performance
Ignacio Felix
Partner, Miami
Brings deep knowledge and expertise to help clients in large-scale operations-transformation efforts, leveraging digital and analytics
Camilo Martins
Partner, São Paulo
Brings operations expertise to Latin American consumer companies, helping executives transform their procurement, manufacturing,...
Tomohiko Funaishi
Partner, Tokyo
Supports retail, consumer-packaged-goods, and retail-banking industries across strategy, operations, marketing, and organization...
Daniel Rexhausen
Partner, Stuttgart
Serves a broad range of retail, consumer goods, logistics, and healthcare clients with a focus on operations issues

Related Insights

Collection

CPG operations—How to win in a rapidly changing environment
– This compendium summarizes current trends in the consumer-goods sector, its implications for supply chains, and how leaders are... adapting to the challenging environment, both from the end-to-end perspective and within each of the relevant functions.
Article - McKinsey Quarterly

Hidden sources of better supply-chain performance
– High-level benchmarks often obscure paths to operations improvements. New data and metrics that tap underlying performance dynamics... offer better visibility.
Article

Supply Chain 4.0 in consumer goods
– In Supply Chain 4.0, supply-chain management applies Industry 4.0 innovations—the Internet of Things, advanced robotics,... analytics, and big data—to jump-start performance, and customer satisfaction.
Article

My supply chain is better than yours—or is it?
– More-detailed benchmarks show that supply chains can still yield significant value—building on the investments so many CPG... companies have already made.

Related Practices

Operations
Solving operational challenges today, to create growth and resilience tomorrow

HOW WE HELP CLIENTS

Connect with our Consumer Packaged Goods Practice

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