16 years improving how manufacturing works.

Case studies

Six problems, and what changed.

Problem, action, result. The interesting parts are usually the ones that didn’t work the first time.

1. 01

   • Pharma & Biotech
   • Governance

   Making external artwork stop breaking supply

   Roche External Manufacturing

   The problem

   External artwork and labelling sits between Roche, regulatory and contract packaging partners. When it slips, it shows up as stockouts, backlog and write-offs on a commercial product.

   What I did

   Redesigned the end-to-end external artwork management process across the ALPIN and WebCenter systems. Mapped the real flow rather than the documented one, fixed the handoffs between Roche functions and packaging partners, defined ownership at each transition, and built the tracking and escalation that made a slipping job visible before it became a supply problem.

   The result

   Zero stockouts, zero backlog and zero write-offs in the tracked process after implementation.

2. 02

   • Governance
   • Pharma & Biotech

   Building a CHF 52M+ view of where the money leaks

   Roche External Manufacturing

   The problem

   Cost of inefficiency across a 180+ partner external network is invisible by default. It lives in write-offs, rework, expedites and supply disruption, spread across years, sites, partners and functions. Nobody owns the total.

   What I did

   Analyzed multi-year cost-of-inefficiency and write-off data across drug substance and drug product to find the Pareto drivers. Turned findings into a governed opportunity pipeline with named owners, financial logic, milestones and decision forums: roughly CHF 11M in supply chain optimization and CHF 5M in Lean opportunities with partners.

   The result

   A CHF 52M+ opportunity pipeline identified and under governance, with CHF 400K+ in hard savings delivered from workflow standardization, process redesign and automation.

   Pipeline is what we found. Delivered is what we banked. I don't merge them.

3. 03

   • Supply Chain
   • Pharma & Biotech

   A site ramp-up that had to double

   Thermo Fisher Scientific, BioProduction, Singapore

   The problem

   A rapid manufacturing scale-up with productivity sitting near 40% and annual revenue and capacity commitments already on the table.

   What I did

   Led site-wide continuous improvement through the PPI Business System: daily management, visual management, leader standard work, value stream mapping and structured problem solving. Worked across Operations, Quality, Engineering, Supply Chain and Warehouse to take constraints out one at a time. Redesigned end-to-end material flow with pull-based replenishment.

   The result

   Productivity moved from roughly 40% to over 90% in about eight months. OTIF improved approximately 40%. Inventory dropped approximately 60%. USD 230K+ in annual hard savings, plus roughly USD 95K per month from warehouse and 3PL redesign.

4. 04

   • Supply Chain
   • Operational Excellence

   Batch to single-piece flow, 15 cells at a time

   Jabil, Singapore

   The problem

   Complex build-to-order, configure-to-order and engineer-to-order cells running in batch. WIP everywhere, long lead times, equipment effectiveness in the thirties.

   What I did

   Converted 15 manufacturing cells from batch to single-piece flow. Ran loss analysis and standard work to attack equipment losses. Removed bottlenecks, redesigned flow, and built the daily operating discipline to hold the gains after the project team left.

   The result

   WIP reduced 92%. OEE from 32% to 56%. Throughput improved roughly 60%. Downtime reduced 30%, cycle time improved 25%. Combined with 54+ Kaizen events, the program generated USD 900K+ in annual savings.

5. 05

   • Quality
   • Capability Building

   Quality as behavior, not inspection

   Jabil and Thermo Fisher Scientific

   The problem

   In both organizations, quality was owned by the Quality function. Everyone else complied. That is the pattern behind most repeat deviations.

   What I did

   Led the Behaviour Based Quality program at Jabil and the Quality Begins with Me program at Thermo Fisher. Defined the observable behaviors that separate a stable line from a fragile one. Found the system barriers behind recurring escapes rather than blaming operators. Embedded the behaviors into leader standard work, Gemba, daily management and structured problem solving, not into a poster campaign.

   The result

   Quality ownership moved into frontline and leadership routines. Speak-up, early escalation and proactive risk identification became part of how the shift ran rather than an annual training slide.

6. 06

   • Digital & AI
   • Smart Manufacturing

   Digital that earned its place

   Jabil and Roche

   The problem

   Most smart-manufacturing programs digitize a process nobody stabilized first. You end up with a real-time dashboard of a process that was never under control.

   What I did

   At Jabil, built and executed smart factory roadmaps using the SIRI digital maturity framework, connecting Lean foundations to IoT, MES, automation and predictive analytics, plus overall labor efficiency tracking, digital QRQC and real-time KPI dashboards. At Roche, shaped digital SQDEC and tiered management approaches, moved workforce allocation and performance reporting to Tableau Cloud, built CDMO performance databases and dashboards, and used workflow automation to convert meeting outputs into tracked actions.

   The result

   Digital tools that people use, because they were installed on top of processes that already worked. Sequence matters more than the tool.