In 2015, this large supermarket was in a challenging position, with decreasing market share and falling sales. One of our managing partners took on the role of Operations Director over a 5-year span, reporting into – and holding to account – the executive leadership. He led a set of transformation and change teams across the whole business impacting over 100,000 people, all delivering parts of the turnaround agenda.

Looking at the operating model of the whole business, the key areas with a focus were forecasting, store and distribution centre replenishment, inventory management and warehouse operations. These required a ground-up process redesign, and the introduction of fit-for-purpose systems. This included the modernisation of the supply chain: machine-learning tools were deployed to revolutionise replenishment in stores and in the DCs.

The labour model was also adjusted to increase productivity by 5%, through reduction and redeployment of tasks in store and in the warehouse.

In total, the turnaround required an annual capital investment of £500m. The work directly resulted in the stock availability rankings achieving equal 1st place. More significantly, there were 17 consecutive quarters of growth. Internally, stock inventory was reduced from around 24 days to less than 7, and there was a 5% reduction in wastage.