For the past 12 months, a major pharmaceutical company had rolled out a comprehensive set of cultural changes and breakthrough lean-process activities that were instigated by the need to cut nearly 25% of costs across its key global production facilities. The cultural changes and breakthrough lean-process activities called for aggressive action, and company leadership thought that the company's cost reduction goal could only be achieved through operational transformation, in a three-prong approach incorporating leadership behavior and management infrastructure changes that complimented the lean initiatives rolled out in the 24 manufacturing operating systems of its more than 40 global sites. A senior leader charged with heading up this global effort schedules a meeting with her lead contact from the external advisory firm hired to help with the design and initial implementation of a cost reduction to discuss the roadblocks they both had encountered at their least successful site.
