CRU Strategies - Performance Improvement Practice
The Performance Improvement Practice involves the provision of advice related to improvements in the operation of a business, a division, or an individual facility. Our consultants are focused on the metals and mining industries and have developed methodologies and benchmarks specific to these industries.
Performance improvement may be expressed in various forms, but the most common is an improvement in the market value of the metals entity in question. This may involve some or all of the following: revenue growth, margin improvement, cost reduction, improved return on capital, introduction of value-based management concepts in a company management information system (MIS). Our consultants have undertaken the following types of performance improvement assignments:
- Benchmarking studies: our consultants undertake a detailed examination of the technical and economic factors that drive the performance of individual production units (e.g. mines, smelters, mills, etc.) with a view to identifying gaps between current performance and best practice, quantifying the potential for improvement, and establishing priorities for change.
- Optimisation projects: examining the potential for optimizing the performance of a plant through such things as changes in product mix. Our consultants have undertaken projects including projects to rationalise and/or optimise activities among plants following mergers or the negotiation of business alliances and projects to optimise the logistics of metal distribution.
- Capital productivity projects: this covers all our work in the field of value-based management and any other project wherein the goal is to improve return on capital or an equivalent measure used by management to measure overall performance. This often extends to a review of and changes in performance measurement systems. Our consultants are able to assist in the implementation of these systems in our client's organisations.
- Efficiency reviews: independent reviews of the efficiency of a specific activity, such as planning, metals marketing or metals risk management, identifying weaknesses, and making recommendations for improvement. This is a more limited activity than benchmarking and is appropriate for activities that are more difficult to quantify.
In the Performance Improvement practice, we differentiate ourselves from the major management consulting companies by our ability, based on our metals industry-specific techno-economic know-how, to drive appropriate management concepts down the organisation and implement them at operating levels, where managers are not routinely familiar with or driven by financial concepts. Our key skill is the integration of financial and economic concepts with technical and operational concepts.
Download our Performance Improvement Practice Area brochure
(PDF format)
Read the following paper presented at MiNiN 2008 (PDF format):
See our case studies on Performance Improvement
If you require further information, please do not hesitate to contact one of our Performance Improvement Area Leaders: