General Management — Accelerating growth and profitability of a 120 mio $ business
Company:
Avery Dennison, Reflective Products Division
Chicago, Illinois
Information:
Graphics Reflective Products Division
Period:
2003 – 2006
Role:
- Vice President
- General Manager
Responsibility:
$110M division with worldwide sales, 3 U.S. plants, 330 employees
Situation:
- The market dominating competitor was ten times larger than the business.
- The IP landscape was complex and hard fought over.
- The tough competition and the broad product portfolio delivered results below EBIT expectations.
- The task was to develop a turnaround strategy with the management team and Corporate resources.
- The goal was profitable growth above the EBIT and ROCE benchmarks.
Challenge:
- Fill out the product portfolio to effectively a compete and improve productivity.
- Increase productivity.
- Improve Gross Profit without major investments.
Execution:
- I was able to emotionally engage the management team and we developed and executed a turnaround strategy.
- Divesting 20% of the business that was non-core was emotional but increased focus on the core.
- Sparking ideas with the R&D and operations team increased output on bottle neck assets by over 20%.
- To augment the product portfolio, I challenged the team to operationalize a ten-year-old patented product that could not be manufactured before.
- I worked with the sales organization and key customers to drive growth.
Result:
- A fully engaged organization.
- Improved gross profit from 16% to 31% within 30 months!
- CAGR over 10%
- Unexpectedly higher proceeds from the divestiture.
- I was awarded GM of the Year of a US Fortune company for the turnaround.
