A PE firm bought three undermanaged food brands and needed better productivity, throughput and yield from the existing assets.

The firm had not decided whether to hold or sell, but operations clearly needed improvement. Frozen dinner lines used the most material and had the most capacity potential.

• Gathered ideas from staff at all levels, then mapped production end to end and set optimal run parameters
• Streamlined meat, chicken cut-up, forming and frying lines with KPIs at the point of execution
• Installed capacity-balanced scheduling and faster startup, changeover and sanitation

The holding was sold at a premium less than two years after acquisition.