Our reference projects in
Capex Excellence
Capex Excellence program in basic chemicals sector
- Our client is Nobian; formerly part of Akzo-Nobel, based in the Netherlands has developed in recent years as industry leader in salt, essential chemicals and energy solutions
- Running energy-intensive processes, its current strategic objective is to transform production reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing share in renewable energy and become more energy efficient. This requires massive investments!
- Growing has been asked to introduce new Capex processes within the whole company, the goal is to instill a mindset of “value maximization” in all medium/large-sized Capex projects and therefore improve ROI
- The program is twofold: creating competence and mindset change in the organization while demonstrating the benefit of the new approach through its application to 3 major investment project. During 2 phases of work, we work with around 60 project managers, asset managers, engineers, buyers and controllers.
- With our experience on Capex projects, we use our minimax approach to find the best compromise between Capex and NPV
- The outcome of this engagement is a “playbook” describing the new way of working and the update of the current project’s management process to embed the new methodology
Optimize profitability of public illumination projects
- Making better use of energy is an important mission for a sustainable life on our planet.
- Our client is a project developer to supply public illumination to municipalities in Italy.
- Growing has been asked to redesign the project development process in order to improve the profitability for such projects.
- We analyze large size of unstructured data from past projects in order to find correlations between all design input parameters, performance and financial outcome. Moreover, we study the current process and propose new ways to improve quality, eliminate waste and increase reliability in the outcome.
- With our experience on Capex projects, we use our “minimax” approach to find the best compromise between Capex and NPV. With our capabilities in data analytics we can quickly develop predictive models to help design decisions.
- The outcome of this engagement is a “playbook” describing the new way of working, to be tested on few pilot projects afterwards.
Projects portfolio review in automotive
- Our client is a large multinational car manufacturer. For its Product Development department, we are asked to support the budgeting process for new Capex requests
- The starting condition is a unstructured and non standard process where all business areas submit a Capex request without a full rationale and information set to take decisions
- We develop a new standard process with request modules, roles definition and criteria for prioritization of requests
- The effects of the portfolio can be simulated with our proprietary tool and therefore the tradeoffs capex/risks are made objective to the decision maker
Development of team and competence in Capex Excellence
- Our client is a multinational specialty chemicals company with 10 bEUR revenues and recently introduced a central team for large Capex projects
- There is the need to develop now a playbook for the improvement of all Capex projects worldwide following a standard approach, the client decides for our proprietary approach “MINIMAX”
- We write a playbook and test it with 4 Capex projects all around Europe
- In parallel, we train the new “Capex Excellence Leaders” to become the experts to support all project leaders
Review of investment design for new vehicles factory in Germany
- Commercial vehicles business of European car maker needs the investment review of a 450 mEUR new factory project
- We achieve 70m EUR Capex reduction in 2 months design review applying following levers
- Line balancing of main welding line in body shop to reduce waiting time and robot capacity
- Line balancing of assembly lines
- Elimination of automation in case of too long payback
- Optimal sizing of indirect functions to reduce opex and size of office building
Investment process optimization in glass packaging industry
- Global glass packaging company with 4+m EUR revenues and continuous furnace refurbishing project pipeline @ 30m EUR each
- In 4 months our design reviews achieved 30% Capex reduction on 4 refurbishing projects and created the first company experts team in capex optimization
- Main levers are: standardization of furnace design, low cost country sourcing of refractories, simplification of bottle-shaping machines requirements based on expected production mix and optimal mix distribution among factories