Interim Managing Director – Automotive 1st Tier
The right Interim Executive will always make a positive contribution to an organisations future success, whether it is experiencing change, growth or decline. Lord’s extensive network of Interim professionals ensures that we will always have the “right” one for you, with the specific set of skills knowledge and experience that will match your needs and requirements exactly – whatever they may be.
Challenge:
A key first tier supplier to some of the world’s most demanding Automotive OEMs, with production facilities across the UK, our client was experiencing significant operational difficulties in one of their plants, culminating in them “unexpectedly” failing a customer audit.
With a management team in denial, unsure of how to proceed and a frustrated customer threatening to remove their tools, the situation was serious and required a timely targeted intervention.
Method:
An Interim brief is rarely one to ponder on; time is a critical factor and can be the difference between success and failure. Clear upon our client requirements we were able to quickly identify and shortlist a number of experienced interim Managing Directors from our extensive network. All were operationally biased, financially literate and with proven automotive sector turnaround experience.
The beauty of hiring an interim is that you can “over recruit” bringing in a superior level of experience and knowledge that you couldn’t justify or probably afford on a full time basis.
With six strong candidates identified, all available to start within the next few weeks our client was reassured by the breadth and depth of experience. They selected within a week, a twenty year automotive industry veteran with extensive turnaround experience.
The Results:
The Interim quickly assessed and restructured the operation. This substantially improved the timely delivery of quality products to its key customers, all with minimum disruption to production. Given the Interim’s experience of the sector, they were able to improve the commercial partnership with a key customer, building trust for existing provision contracts and obtaining commitment for future volume production contracts.
In tandem, the Interim evaluated the management team’s skills, experience and behavior’s quickly implementing personal development plans and targets. This resulted in a small restructure of the operational facility and a drastic reduction in temporary labour. The Interim Managing Director then also advised on and implemented a cost reduction program including a UK site consolidation exercise.
Conclusion:
From failure to conformance within a few short months, the plants future was secured and the interim with our help recruited their full time replacement.