INDUSTRY-BASED RESULTS

OUR PERSPECTIVE

Against a backdrop of persistent economic uncertainty, chemical companies around the world are striving to extract maximum value from their assets in operation. Consequently, the most common themes we hear from chemical industry leaders are throughput, productivity and service excellence. Chemical executives are also battling to:

• Manage increased input price volatility, including anticipating rapidly changing business economics, controlling profitability risk (through buy- or sell-side contracts) and increasing their hedging-strategy sophistication
• Respond to the evolution of the petroleum industry toward unconventional sources such as shale gas and oil sands
• Remain competitive amidst continuing globalization, as well as understanding and responding to new demands on the supply chain
• Remain flexible to mirror the changing structure of the industry as regional players strengthen their position globally and large, diversified global firms divest non-core assets

OUR PRACTICE

The Highland Group has helped dozens of world-class chemical companies deliver several hundred million dollars of incremental income over the past two decades. We achieved these outsize results by delivering improvements in:

• Strategic sourcing and input cost control
• Material yield
• Processing throughput
• Converting-cost efficiencies
• Fixed-cost reductions
• Distribution network design and operation
• Inventory control
• Customer service

We have served a wide variety of chemical firms around the world – including both continuous and batch processing firms – across the complexity spectrum from simple, mix-and-fill operations to sophisticated, multi-stage processors. During our partnership with each of these organizations, we met – and in most cases, far exceeded – our clients’ most critical business objectives. Our Senior Model helps us achieve these consistent results: all of our consultants bring a minimum of 15 years of successful industry and consulting experience. Moreover, our firm’s cross-sector expertise empowers us to cross-pollinate the most innovative ideas from related industries to serve our chemical-sector clients.

Chemical executives choose The Highland Group as their partner in delivering sustainable operational change and performance improvements because we:

• Operate a global team ready to deploy anywhere in the world
• Offer complete focus and clarity in targeting our clients’ business Driver Goals
• Employ a robust, hands-on approach that leverages only senior consultants who have front-line, domain expertise and credibility within the chemicals sector
• Deliver significant, measurable results via our proven, proprietary project methodology
• Ensure sustainable change by delivering operational insight to client senior management while engaging employees and contractors at the front-line operations level

Our diverse work in the chemicals industry includes:

• For an industrial rubber manufacturer: Reduced scrap and achieved an 18% increase in throughput and revenue from existing assets without increasing converting or material costs
• For an industrial adhesives company: Improved throughput by 30% while enhancing quality performance and reducing customer lead times by 60%
• For a plastics and resins manufacturer: Reduced missed orders by 80% and cut outbound delivery costs by 3 cents a pound; achieved US$8M in cost savings
• For a manufacturer of industrial tubing and belting: Established global strategic sourcing practices that reduced input costs by US$25M within 6 months
• For one of the world’s largest plastics, chemicals and fuels companies: Reduced social costs while increasing workforce flexibility and performance in a challenging union environment
• For a refining operation: Increased output from existing assets by 15% through sophisticated process modeling to address variable inputs; developed management tools to ensure effective use in day-to-day operations

Our uncommon level of expertise and results span the entire chemical value chain. We pride ourselves on delivering sustainable operational excellence through our goal-driven, hands-on approach.