The client’s prior cost programme had cut evenly across every business unit and missed its target by half — the cuts landed on plants that were already lean and left genuine overcapacity untouched. We rebuilt the cost base from general-ledger detail by plant and product line, found the overcapacity was concentrated in three of eleven plants, and built a programme that closed one plant, right-sized two, and left the rest of the network untouched.
The finance team co-owned the baseline from week one, which is the difference between a number that holds and a number that gets renegotiated in month six.