Brunswick Bierworks
Performance Improvement Beyond the Initial Scope
In june 2023, I was initially brought in to address specific operational performance issues at Brunswick Bierworks. Rather than limiting the intervention to the problems initially identified, I looked at the broader system to understand where performance was being lost and where additional opportunities could be created.
The Challenge
The initial request focused on improving operational performance. However, the situation involved multiple interconnected factors — productivity, labour utilization, materials, workplace organization and production performance.
The challenge was therefore not simply to improve one process or one KPI, but to understand how the different elements of the operation interacted and where the greatest opportunities for improvement were actually located.
My Approach
I started by mapping the broader process using a SIPOC approach, deliberately looking beyond the immediate problem to understand the complete system and its interfaces.
The analysis covered several dimensions of the operation, including labour utilization, productivity, materials, 5S, brewing operations and OEE.
This broader analysis revealed opportunities that would have remained outside the scope of the original request. In particular, the data showed that some of the apparent performance issues were symptoms of deeper interactions between processes, resources and operating practices.
What Changed
The intervention evolved from a targeted improvement exercise into a broader performance transformation.
By expanding the scope of the analysis, we were able to identify and prioritize opportunities according to their potential business impact rather than simply addressing the issues that were most visible at the outset.
This created a much broader improvement agenda for Brunswick, combining operational performance, resource utilization and process discipline.
The Business Impact
Over a five-and-a-half-month engagement, the intervention generated business value significantly greater than the €350,000 consulting investment.
The return did not come from a single isolated improvement, but from identifying and addressing multiple opportunities across the broader operating system.
This demonstrated the value of looking beyond the initial problem: the largest opportunities were found not by optimizing one KPI in isolation, but by understanding how labour, materials, processes and production performance interacted.
What Brunswick said:
“Before the project started, our canning line OEE was below 30%, and despite various improvement initiatives, none of the improvements had delivered a sustainable or significant increase in performance. Since the launch of the OEE improvement project with you, however, the progress has been consistent and measurable.”
“The monthly average OEE reached 42.5% at the end of 2023, then 46.6% for the full year 2024, before accelerating to 58.2% in 2025, representing a 24.9% improvement compared with the previous year. In 2026, we are currently tracking an average of 63.9%, which represents the best sustained performance we have ever achieved.”
“The fact that this improvement has been sustained over three consecutive years confirms to me that this is a structural change rather than simply a temporary performance peak.”
Lahcen El Ghachi
Head of Technical
Brunswick Bierworks