A leading global player in the packaging industry was facing significant challenges due to recurring problems across its 22 locations. These recurring problems were impacting sales, supplier relationships, and internal operations, leading to substantial financial losses and decreased customer satisfaction.

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The Challenge: Recurring Problems Across 22 Plants

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• Sales: Recurring problems were putting customer relationships at risk, particularly with key clients. There was no consistent system for tracking and managing customer complaints across different sites.

• Suppliers: Difficulty in proving supplier responsibility for recurring issues was leading to missed chargebacks. Lack of visibility into supplier performance made it challenging to identify trends and compare suppliers effectively.

• Internal Plants: The absence of a centralized problem solving system resulted in the same problems being solved repeatedly at different plants. Inconsistent investigation quality across plants created further inefficiencies.

 

The estimated cost of these inefficiencies was significant. For example, re-solving problems that had already been addressed elsewhere cost the company an estimated $1.5 million across Europe alone.

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The Solution: One Standardized 8D System for Complaints, Suppliers and Plants

 

The packaging company implemented PHRED, a web-based problem-solving software, to address these challenges. PHRED provided a centralized platform to manage problems from customer complaints to supplier issues and internal plant concerns.

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• Sales: PHRED instilled confidence in knowing what was happening across the company, including which sites were experiencing problems with specific customers. The standardized 8D system ensured consistent, high-quality reporting to customers, bolstering their confidence.

• Suppliers: PHRED provided the data necessary to support supplier chargebacks. The system enabled real-time visibility into supplier performance, allowing identification of trends and comparison of suppliers.

• Internal Plants: PHRED provided visibility across all sites, enabling the identification and prevention of recurring problems. The centralized platform:

  • Facilitated collaboration, driving actions, and sharing information effectively

  • Provided an easy way to generate reports and manage actions, streamlining internal processes

  • Improved the quality of root cause analysis, ensuring that solutions were more effective and sustainable

 

The Results: Fewer Repeat Problems, Stronger Customer Confidence

• Repeat problems eliminated: With visibility across all 22 locations, plants now find and reuse solutions already proven elsewhere instead of re-solving the same problems, a cost the company had estimated at $1.5 million in Europe alone.

• Supplier chargebacks recovered: PHRED gives the team the data to prove supplier responsibility, so chargebacks that used to be missed are now supported, and supplier performance can be compared side by side.

• Consistent reporting customers trust: Every site follows the same standardized 8D process, so key customers receive the same high-quality report no matter which plant handled their complaint.

• Better root cause analysis: Investigations are consistent across plants, so fixes are more effective and problems stay solved.

• Immediate ROI: Time savings across 22 locations and hundreds of users meant PHRED paid for itself right away.

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Running multiple plants? See how PHRED stops repeat problems across every site.