How to do more with less and keep on doing it

Preparing the Adisseo vitamin business to do more with less was about enabling people to work together more efficiently and productively. And that meant re-engineering to pursue and achieve leading-edge efficiency everywhere in the business: purchasing, supply chain, R&D, quality control, production, finance, HR, HSE, maintenance and engineering.

Adisseo develops and manufactures nutritional additives for the animal production industry, helping feed manufacturers, premixers and integrators improve their performance.

As a pioneer of animal nutrition, Adisseo was among the first to support the industrialisation of livestock farming by designing, developing and producing feed additives such as amino acids, vitamins and enzymes.

Adisseo has headquarters in Antony, France (near Paris), serves customers in more than 140 countries, and employs more than 1300 people.

Global overcapacity had brought strong downward pressure on prices for vitamin feed additives, a market that accounts for half of Adisseo’s 550 million sales. Profitability was further eroded by the dollar’s fall against the euro. Adisseo’s top executives decided that decisive steps must be taken to improve vitamin P&L by at least 25 million.

This goal would be pursued through a project they named VITALIS. Applying an approach Celerant calls Closework®, Celerant and Adisseo together completed an analysis which identified 16 million in P&L improvements they might pursue jointly, plus 10 million in improvements Adisseo could pursue on its own. Celerant then worked with Adisseo leaders to prioritise the improvement actions within VITALIS, defining and validating 123 distinct sub-projects, and confirming management’s commitment to each.

Ten work streams were led by Adisseo managers and supported by Celerant as well as by Adisseo internal consultants. Celerant provided continuous ‘train the trainer’ events, coaching and guidance as the teams designed and implemented new organisations and management systems. Celerant and Adisseo people worked side by side to re-engineer purchasing, supply chain, R&D, quality control, production, finance, HR, HSE,
maintenance and engineering.

VITALIS generated 29 million in P&L improvement, of which Celerant helped to deliver 18 million.

Gérard Deman, Adisseo’s Chief Executive Officer, has the big picture very much in mind when he describes VITALIS: "The word that comes to mind is ‘big’. VITALIS was a big project for us, in terms of its importance to our business and its scale. That’s why we brought in additional resources."

As Mr Deman explains, the decision to involve Celerant was partly triggered by a previous and productive working relationship: "We had experienced a successful project
with Celerant in 1999. We believed it could help us think through how best to start, carry out and fi nish VITALIS.
It is not so easy to execute a project over 18-20 months. Many projects start out well, but after a year they are in trouble."

Big projects always bring specific and personal challenges to senior management. Mr Deman is clear about the issues he faced: "For me, the greatest challenge was simultaneously managing relations with the shareholders and the unions. The key to working with the unions was communication. We were very transparent. We answered all their questions. We looked for
questions to answer. We certainly expected to disagree at times, but we did not want to disagree because of misunderstandings."

To justify and sustain a position of trust, Celerant had to adopt an approach that would fit comfortably with Adisseo’s own style. On the question of how well Celerant meshed with its client, Mr Deman is unequivocal: "Very well. Celerant’s analysis, for example, helped us make the goals for VITALIS more concrete. We could be very clear about what this project aimed to accomplish, and why those changes were needed. Just as important, the analysis involved many people in the project early on. That built ownership. Throughout, Celerant worked closely with us. We were a team. If there was a problem, Celerant would call me right away and we’d work through it together."

Desirable as that collaborative approach is, however, management inevitably and quickly looks for tangible value generation. Asked what he feels Celerant brought to the party in terms of real value, Gérard Deman does not hesitate to give a detailed answer: "I especially appreciated the methodologies Celerant brought us. The Best Practices Pyramids are a good example. They delivered outstanding value to our company. For a business of our size, Celerant’s tools and methodologies proved very important because, without them, it would have been difficult to succeed in a project of this kind.

"I also appreciated the feedback Celerant consultants offered our leaders at all levels. Most of that feedback was delivered informally.

"It was everyday advice that helped us make good adjustments. Finally, I saw that Celerant’s coaching helped our leaders to grow. A number of managers developed signifi cantly during the project. Celerant calls it Closework®."

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Didier Garcia, Adisseo's Vitalis General Manager, talks about his experiences of working with Celerant.

Q How did you shape the VITALIS project?

A There were three main steps. First, analysis. We surfaced a lot of ideas, each expressed as a VITALIS subproject. Second, we looked at the feasibility of each sub-project. We assessed the results we could expect as well as the diffi culty of attaining them, to validate which actions we should implement. Third, and this was an area where Celerant helped us towards a big improvement in our thinking, we looked hard at what we must do to continue with best practices long term. We wanted to prevent what you so often see – when the project is complete, the company goes back to its old ways of working. VITALIS was built to last.

Q What special challenges did VITALIS face?

A In France, we have regulations addressing the ‘social impact’ of business actions. Mostly, it’s about employment. We communicated with French authorities and we fully involved our lawyers and HR staff, to ensure VITALIS complied with social
impact laws.

Q Describe the work on the front lines of VITALIS…

A At all sites, we had task-forces working on the action sub-projects we had defined. These teams were led by Adisseo managers, with support from Celerant and from internal Adisseo consultants. Each sub-project had its own plan for how its goals would be reached, including a completion schedule with milestones to mark their progress. Sub-projects reported weekly. Those reports were reviewed by me and the steering
committee. VITALIS was a complex project. Fortunately, we had the structure in place to manage it. We stayed in close touch with all that was going on. And we kept information
flowing out to the company through face-to-face communication and a VITALIS newsletter.

Q What stands out about your experiences with Celerant?

A I appreciated that Celerant took our company’s story into account. Celerant’s consultants brought their own distinct views, their own set of ideas… but we discussed fully how
to apply their solutions at Adisseo. As I mentioned, Celerant put great emphasis on continuity, and today I see many people here continuing to work with the project methodology. We’re also breaking through the silos that used to separate Adisseo entities. Lastly, for me and some others, VITALIS was an opportunity to show that we were prepared to do more, to take on more responsibilities. The Celerant consultants supporting us clearly cared about our success. They fully supported our development.

Q Do you rate VITALIS a success?

A We made the vitamins business much more cost-effective. There was no strike. And people here now seem to feel more a part of what we’re trying to do. That’s important because we all need to work together to succeed in our very challenging marketplace.

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Didier Martin, who managed the Adisseo relationship for Celerant, shares his thoughts on the success of Vitalis...

Q How did Celerant work with Adisseo on VITALIS?

A Initially, we were chosen mainly because of the trust Gérard Deman had in Celerant. Then, it quickly developed into a very close collaboration. The Celerant team and the client were always working together, sharing good news and bad. First thing in the morning, I’d have a site meeting with the Adisseo internal project manager. Each of the Celerant consultants did the same with Adisseo’s internal consultants. We’d review main activities from the day before, and then set our to-do
lists for the day. A typical day was spent focused on work streams. In the early afternoon, we would gather for a daily project meeting, and then fan back out for more work-stream activity. Adisseo’s internal consultants and the Celerant consultants quickly became one team. Their problems were ours,
and ours were theirs. We were all in it together.

Q What challenges arose during this project?

A There were many. One big challenge was gaining the commitment of Adisseo’s front-line managers. The goals had been set and we needed managers to really commit to them. For that to happen, of course, they needed to believe that what we were asking them to do could actually be done. Further, they had to want it
to happen for reasons of their own, not just because we were asking them to do it. So we engaged in a lot of communication along those lines.

Q What did you say to the front-line managers and unions?

A The message we delivered, in concert with Adisseo leadership, was that in light of the very competitive market, it was absolutely necessary to reduce costs. We had a plan for doing that, and it was in everyone’s interest for the VITALIS project to succeed. Gérard Deman persistently communicated these themes. He was very open. His example paved the way to what became a very forthright dialogue.

Q What did you find most gratifying about your work with Adisseo?

A Most of all, we are gratifi ed by the results on the bottom line and the cultural change. VITALIS exceeded its original results plan. Top management was so enthused by the VITALIS spirit that it wanted to deploy it across Adisseo. That we accomplished all that with no strike, when a strike was such a
concern at the outset, should be a point of pride for everyone involved in the project. VITALIS is a great example of people across a business finding common ground and then working together to shape a better future.

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"As a company, we have made significant progress in project management. We have since launched another project, this time without Celerant. It is very important that we can do that because it demonstrates that our own management really is stronger, that everything we learned from VITALIS we will carry into the future.

"We are also more focused on best practices. We regularly think in best-practice terms to choose our course of action.

"The biggest difference, though, is that we achieved the targets. Actually, we exceeded them. We can prove it because all the impact of VITALIS shows in our bottom line."

- Gerard Deman, CEO, Adisseo