The company
A top-three plastics producer with a turnover of more than €5 billion. This company produces high-quality plastics at several sites. One of those sites, which produces more than 6oo Kton of plastics annually, wanted to increase production volumes drastically and, at the same time, lower its operating costs per ton as part of a company-wide supply chain excellence programme.

The situation
The site’s logistics unit of more than 90 employees was handling over 600 Kton of plastics every year, while its logistical costs were exceeding €14 million a year. Management planned to increase production to 1,000 Kton of plastics with the help of extensive investment, but was concerned about its operating expenses, so it asked Gwynt to develop a logistics blueprint that would enable the unit to pack and load these larger volumes on a reduced cost base.

The approach
We developed a 3-step logistics blueprint for the site: determine the starting position and improvement potential, work out various scenarios, and draw up an improvement plan. First, we made an overview of material flows and costs. Then we benchmarked activities and identified bottlenecks. Afterwards, solutions were produced for equipment, assets and productivity and several scenarios (lowest cost, lowest investment, outsourcing and best of breed) were constructed. Our last step was to formulate an implementation roadmap.

The result
The blueprint has since been carried out and delivered a number of impressive results:

• A clear overview of volumes and capacity problems
• Likely scenarios and a consistent combination of solutions
• One realistic and agreed plan to achieve improvements
• 200% productivity increase per employee and 50% cost reduction per ton
• Annual cost reductions of >€5 million a year and an IRR of >25% for investments