Printing a Pathway to Sustainable Growth

Project Type: OpEx, BI, Analytics

Innovative Labeling Solutions (ILS), a full-service label and packaging company, was underperforming from a profitability and customer service perspective. AMEND partnered with ILS to transform the business into a best-in-class organization and scale the business for significant and sustainable EBIDTA growth. The strategy centered on three areas – organizational and cultural change, process improvements, and implementation of BI and technology - resulting in a successful sale and exit that the owners were pleased with.

Company Overview
- Industry: Label Manufacturer
- HQ: Hamilton, OH
Assessing the Landscape
- 100+ unique orders processed per day
Identifying Opportunity
- Manual processes and significant “tribal knowledge”
- Considerable waste and shop floor inefficiencies
- Many “reports” but little actionable information
- Multiple people analyzing data and arriving at different results

I. The Solution

Organizational Change & Enterprise Value

AMEND’s David Velie served as interim COO at ILS and came alongside leadership to first look at the team responsible for the desired outcomes. We evaluated the current-state org chart to ensure the right team was in place to scale the organization. We stacked the team with “A” talent and drove organizational change by moving to a performance-driven culture. We also assessed which industry verticals to target and defined strategies to penetrate those verticals.

Process Improvements

We mapped and evaluated current-state processes, targeting throughput and waste. Root cause analysis was used to determine the “why” behind the underperformance. We then implemented improvements to streamline these processes, including reengineering the entire order-to-cash process. Establishing new processes and redefining KPIs changed the way ILS looks at their business from a day-to-day perspective.

Business Intelligence & Technology

Many of ILS’s inefficiencies were resolved with the implementation of Business Intelligence and technology. Existing reporting mechanisms lacked the level of granularity needed to truly understand what was happening in the business. AMEND built and deployed enterprise-wide automated dashboards and reporting (including customer-facing reports) to create a single-source of truth for all KPI’s.

Additionally, the scheduling process at ILS was manual, time-consuming, and relied heavily on tribal knowledge. We designed an Advanced Planning and Scheduling tool called Batched to automate and optimize their production schedule. We also performed Customer and SKU analysis and rationalization, identifying areas of opportunity for improved customer service and ways to become more profitable by eliminating certain customers.

II. Results

Org Chart development enabled sustainable growth of the business and BI work allowed leadership to focus on other priorities. Implementation of BI became the catalyst for most process improvement projects and opened the door for timely, candid conversations about what might need to happen to shift strategies or reenergize initiatives. Establishing automated workflows reduced human error and labor inefficiencies, significantly improved on-time delivery, and drastically reduced quality issues. Ultimately, this resulted in increased gross margin and EBITDA of ~+5%.

Increased Enterprise Value

At Sale

Catalyst

For Process Improvements

Increase in EBITDA

“The relationships that you build with the AMEND team when they come onsite and become a partner go beyond the workplace. They’re more like part of the family than they are an outside group. That’s really created an environment of trust and open, honest communication around what is the problem we’re trying to solve and how can we best get there.”

Joe Wordeman, Director of Digital Operations