ConsultingThe Situation
A multi-site pharmaceuticals manufacturer, built through a merger and then left structurally unaligned when two businesses were separated again two years later. A board-approved growth strategy existed — but the organisation underneath it had never been rebuilt to deliver it. Duplicated roles, orphaned tasks and unclear accountability were the legacy of the merge and de-merge, still unresolved years on.
The pressure was immediate: rising input costs colliding with eroding market prices, and a board mandate for significant, sustainable cost savings, delivered with urgency. The one non-negotiable constraint was that product quality and regulatory standing could not be compromised in the process — this was a manufacturer of vaccines and other therapeutic products, where a cost program that touched the wrong process was not a viable option.
The Approach
We applied the same operating-model framework used across every Aequus engagement — Align, Design, Perform, Embed — as a continuous-improvement cycle rather than a one-off restructure, moving from group-level direction down to individual accountability and back to organisation-wide standards.
Structural change was applied at the functional level as well as the enterprise level. Inside materials management — the function most exposed to the cost and quality pressure at once — we stood up a governance committee spanning supply chain, quality assurance, quality control, manufacturing, regulatory affairs, IT and procurement, chaired by the supply chain director and reporting to the senior director of quality and VP of operations. Its mandate: prioritise, resource, coordinate and review high-impact materials management activity end to end, against the same five accountability domains used everywhere else in the business — with every committee member accountable for a named priority project, not just attendance.
Established cross-functional governance and end-to-end materials management across multi-site vaccine facilities to eliminate batch write-offs, resolve QA/Ops friction, and ensure perpetual FDA/TGA audit readiness.
End-to-End Value Stream Architecture
Mapped the complete material journey—from vendor master data and active ingredient intake to sterile compounding, fill-finish, cold-chain storage, and distribution—establishing clear ownership at each interface.
Single-Point Accountability
Replaced vague department guidelines with explicit Scope accountability matrices defining non-conformance investigation timelines, raw material safety buffers, and scrap escalation triggers.
Cross-Functional KPI Alignment
Unified Ops and QA around shared performance measures: "Right place, right time, right quantity, right quality, right documentation" (Right First Time).
Transformed materials management from a chronic operational hazard into a global manufacturing benchmark, eliminating millions in waste and establishing permanent regulatory trust.
The Delivery
One accountability framework was applied across eight levels of work, from executive leadership through business leadership to process leadership and operations — the same five non-overlapping domains at every level: strategy and capability, growth and innovation, operational excellence, profitability and return on capital, and customer focus. That consistency is what let a technical, change-fatigued leadership team trust the redesign: every structural change could be traced back to accountability for a specific business outcome, never to a headcount target set in advance.
The Outcome
Step-change cost improvement targeted, beyond business-as-usual efforts.
Levels of work brought under one accountability framework, executive to operations.
Cross-functional governance committee stood up for end-to-end materials management.
Compromise to product quality or regulatory standing — the engagement's binding constraint.
From the engagement's outcome review