Operational Excellence: Driving Out Cost and Improving Reliability at a Chemical Plant

Client Context

A chemical manufacturing company faced extreme cost pressures and needed to improve EBITDA through operational efficiency and reliability enhancements.

With new leadership in place, the company sought EFESO’s expertise to accelerate improvements, enhance plant performance, and engage the entire organization in a sustainable continuous improvement initiative.

Key Challenges

• Urgent need to reduce costs and improve EBITDA.
• Operational inefficiencies impacting plant performance and reliability.
• Lack of structured performance management and accountability.
• Need to institutionalize a culture of continuous improvement.

Approach & Key Success Factors

EFESO leveraged its Best Run Chemical Operations Playbook, benchmarking the company against industry best practices to identify cost reduction and performance improvement opportunities.

1. Leadership & Performance Management

• Provided coaching and training to equip leaders with tools for sustained operational excellence.
• Implemented a KPI-driven Performance Management Operating System to enhance visibility and accountability.

2. Best Practices Implementation & Ownership

• Deployed new operating models to improve processes and systems.
• Established clear roles and responsibilities to drive ownership and accountability.
• Introduced Continuous Improvement frameworks and Visual Management for real-time performance tracking.

3. Operational Effectiveness & Reliability Improvements

• Transferred ownership of core workflow maintenance to operations.
• Enhanced maintenance and reliability strategies, including Leader Walks and Operator-Driven Maintenance.
• Consolidated soft crafts and implemented metric-driven contractor productivity.
• Applied Lean principles to improve efficiency in Laboratory, Truck Loading Docks, and Warehouse operations.

Results

$15.6 million

Annual pre-tax earnings improvement (10%).

Increase from 40% to 90%.

In manpower utilization 

100%

Weekly load schedule adherence (vs. daily scheduling before).

From 42% to 86%

Schedule attainment improved 

From 40% to 10%.

Priority 1 (P1) incidents reduced 

50%

Truck loading efficiency increased.