Nestlé Continuous Excellence: Operations and beyond
APRIL 2010. Nestlé Continuous Excellence (NCE) had been implemented in 300 factories in 15 countries, and had achieved well over CHF 1.5 billion in cost savings the year before. It had been rolled out using a deployment plan that involved pilot locations that had volunteered for the program. José Lopez, Nestlé’s executive vice president of global operations, had convincingly demonstrated the benefit of NCE in operations. Now he wanted to see it rolled out to the rest of the organization. One major advantage of NCE was its built-in sustainability. It had a sequence of steps, which were supposed to take on average between two to ten years to complete. At each step, there was an assessment of progress against milestones to demonstrate concrete performance improvement in waste elimination. The gate was not a “one-time pass – always pass;” monitoring was done on a regular basis. As such, the gate served as a continuous improvement tool. NCE’s sustainability, employee engagement and impressive financial returns convinced Lopez that if NCE were implemented in other functions, it could serve as the competitive driver for Nestlé. How should he convince his colleagues on the board?
The objective of this case is to encourage participants to think about (1) how to engage employees across a global organization, (2) how best to convince the top level of management of the benefit of rolling out a successful operations initiative across the entire organization, and (3) to explore the key success factors for the successful roll-out of a global initiative.
Nestlé, Consumer Goods, Food and Beverage
2007-2010
Cranfield University
Wharley End Beds MK43 0JR, UK
Tel +44 (0)1234 750903
Email [email protected]
Harvard Business School Publishing
60 Harvard Way, Boston MA 02163, USA
Tel (800) 545-7685 Tel (617)-783-7600
Fax (617) 783-7666
Email [email protected]
NUCB Business School
1-3-1 Nishiki Naka
Nagoya Aichi, Japan 460-0003
Tel +81 52 20 38 111
Email [email protected]
IMD retains all proprietary interests in its case studies and notes. Without prior written permission, IMD cases and notes may not be reproduced, used, translated, included in books or other publications, distributed in any form or by any means, stored in a database or in other retrieval systems. For additional copyright information related to case studies, please contact Case Services.
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Officially, brands executives continue to display confidence that big luxury will shrug off the 2024 downturn as a cyclical one. They see it as the product of the combined collapse of real estate prices in China and a return to normalcy after the ...
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
in I by IMD
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
in I by IMD 8 January 2025
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
in I by IMD
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
in Binder, Julia Katharina (Ed.); Haanaes, Knut Bjarne (Ed.) / Leading the sustainable business transformation: A playbook from IMD, pp. 59-62 / Hoboken: Wiley, 2025
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
in Binder, Julia Katharina (Ed.); Haanaes, Knut Bjarne (Ed.) / Leading the sustainable business transformation: A playbook from IMD, pp. 1-7 / Hoboken: Wiley, 2025
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications