From Local Planning to Global Visibility: How a Pharma Business Built Demand Visibility and  Improved Customer Service 

Oliver Wight supported a traditional, family-owned pharmaceutical manufacturer in southern Europe. At the time of the engagement, the business was under €1 billion in revenue and operated through multiple subsidiaries, with its main manufacturing centres in Italy. 

Like many family businesses, the organisation’s priorities and values shaped what “good change” could look like. The leadership culture was not driven by efficiency, though the business held strong people values. There was also a natural scepticism towards external consultants, with a strong preference to solve challenges internally wherever possible. 

The trigger

A newly appointed Supply Chain Director attempted to introduce an S&OP mindset and discipline into the organisation. Despite strong relationships within the business, the shift did not take hold. Recognising that the organisation needed external support to break through entrenched ways of working, the Supply Chain Director brought Oliver Wight in to support the journey. 

This engagement was led by an Oliver Wight Partner as their first project with the firm, making it both a client transformation and a consultant’s early Proven Path® experience in a complex cultural setting. 

The challenge

The business needed to become more predictable and better aligned across its planning disciplines, without presenting the work as a “methodology rollout” or overwhelming stakeholders with jargon. The organisation was not asking for “IBP”. It wanted a business that delivered reliably and could scale its performance. 

Several underlying issues made this difficult: 

• Demand was fragmented across subsidiaries, making it hard for the central planning and manufacturing hub in Italy to develop a clear, consolidated view of what the business needed to produce and when. 

• Key planning disciplines were inconsistent and poorly connected particularly across product and portfolio planning, demand planning, supply planning, and end-to-end supply chain planning. 

• Continuous improvement was not embedded as a working discipline and, in some areas, was not well understood. 

• Behaviours and ways of working reflected a successful legacy model: strong products, strong margins, and a culture that did not naturally reward operational discipline.

Just as importantly, sponsorship was complex. Oliver Wight was engaged by the Supply Chain Director, not by the Commercial Director, not by the Managing Director, and not by the owning family. That meant the programme had to build credibility function by function, proving value through outcomes and practicality rather than positional authority. 

The human reality: resistance by function 

The organisation’s resistance points were clear and varied: 

• Marketing initially viewed the introduction of demand planning as a control mechanism. Over time, that perception shifted as the function began to see demand planning as a support that improved decision-making and delivery. 

• Research and development questioned the relevance of planning discipline, viewing product development as inherently creative and science-led, rather than something that benefited from structured controls. 

• Factory and supply chain teams were accustomed to longstanding routines and questioned the need for continuous improvement, particularly in a business that had historically performed well. 
• The Managing Director was not naturally motivated by efficiency and optimisation work. The programme began with limited visible support from the top, creating a need for careful stakeholder management and internal coalition-building.

What Oliver Wight did 

The work ran for approximately 18 months and focused on building practical planning controls and performance discipline across the enterprise, without leading with technical terminology. 

The core areas of focus included: 

• Product and portfolio planning with an emphasis on planning and execution practices 

• Demand planning, with an emphasis on creating a consolidated, enterprise-level demand view 

• Supply and supply chain planning 

• Continuous improvement 

• People and behaviours 

• Strategy linkage, particularly where planning needed to connect to enterprise priorities

To make the change stick, Oliver Wight also worked with HR and supported a substantial communication programme. The intent was to make the case for change meaningful in a values-led family business environment and to build understanding across functions that were not naturally aligned around the same planning language. 

Implementation and rollout 

Rather than presenting the work as an “IBP implementation”, the programme was positioned as a performance and delivery journey: building visibility, discipline and shared ways of working that would help the organisation execute more reliably across a multi-subsidiary footprint. 

A key part of rollout was shifting perceptions of planning from “control” to “enablement”. Marketing’s transition was particularly significant, moving from concern about oversight to recognition that demand planning could help teams deliver, coordinate and avoid avoidable disruption. 

In parallel, continuous improvement was moved from concept to capability. The business appointed a dedicated manager to carry the discipline, signalling that improvement would be sustained internally rather than treated as a temporary project activity. 

Results and benefits 

The engagement delivered a set of outcomes that combined performance improvement with enterprise-level visibility. 

A consolidated global demand view
The business achieved a single, consolidated demand view across its subsidiaries. This significantly improved the organisation’s ability to understand what demand looked like across the enterprise and gave the manufacturing centres in Italy a clearer basis for planning. This created a platform for international consolidation and growth that would not have been possible without that visibility. 

Customer service performance and shared incentives
One of the most distinctive outcomes was the introduction of a shared incentive tied to customer service performance. The programme achieved customer service performance above 98% and, for the first time in the organisation, established a bonus mechanism for everyone based on that outcome. Implementing this required engagement with unions and agreement on the approach, reinforcing that the change was enterprise-wide rather than confined to one function. 

Repatriation of outsourced volumes
Improved planning and visibility enabled the organisation to repatriate volumes that had previously been outsourced, strengthening control of production and improving the organisation’s ability to use its assets more effectively. 

Improved asset utilisation in a pharma context
The programme supported better exploitation of manufacturing and packaging assets. In pharmaceutical manufacturing, packaging lines can run at low utilisation because product changeovers are onerous, leading to significant downtime. Improving the ability to plan, sequence and execute around these constraints created meaningful value for the organisation. 

Continuous improvement embedded as a capability
Continuous improvement was embedded into the business as an ongoing discipline, supported by a named internal owner, rather than remaining an external or temporary initiative. 

Increased visibility and control over R&D spend
While product development did not transform overnight, the programme created greater visibility and stronger controls around how investment was made in the future of the business and its expected outcomes.

Scaling beyond the initial scope
Following the initial work, the organisation rolled out three additional “phases” in other parts of the business, extending coverage to roughly 80% of total revenue across multiple geographies. 

Leadership shift 

The Managing Director did not become the visible sponsor of the programme, though and that was never the goal. Over time, however, the MD’s stance moved from indifference to practical support. The programme earned enough credibility that leadership could see its value, and the MD became willing to back it if the work encountered obstacles, even without acting as the public champion of the change. 

Why this case study matters

This case study demonstrates what effective transformation can look like in a family-owned, values-led business where traditional “efficiency arguments” do not motivate leadership and where consultant involvement is naturally resisted. 

Oliver Wight’s work focused on building a delivery capability: creating a consolidated demand view, embedding continuous improvement, improving customer service performance, and aligning incentives and behaviours across the organisation. The result was not simply a new process, but a stronger enterprise platform for coordination, execution and growth.