Food Manufacturer Achieves 10% Uplift in Line Throughput with Digital Transformation

The situation

A North American food manufacturer operating over 40 factories across the region faced a critical challenge: scaling digital and analytics transformations across its distributed factory network. The company had initiated pilot projects at individual sites, but struggled to move beyond these isolated efforts into company-wide implementation. This pilot paralysis left the organisation unable to capitalise on proven improvements or address systemic inefficiencies across its operations.

The urgency of transformation was underscored by shifting market expectations. In 2022, 42% of shoppers expected a 2-day shipping option for every online purchase they made. The manufacturer's own performance fell short of this demand: only 55% of North American customers received 1-2 day shipping before the transformation began. To meet customer expectations and remain competitive, the company needed to unlock operational efficiency across its entire factory footprint—not just at pilot sites.

The approach

Rather than attempting to implement solutions factory-by-factory in isolation, the company adopted a network-based approach to digital transformation. This strategy began with identifying common needs and problems that existed across multiple factories. By codifying these shared challenges, the organisation could develop standardised solutions rather than reinventing approaches at each site.

The company then built a catalog of solutions designed to address the common problems identified across its network. This catalog became the foundation for scaling: proven pilots could be rapidly deployed to other factories facing similar operational constraints. The network approach created momentum by allowing successful implementations to inform subsequent rollouts, reducing redundant work and accelerating adoption across the factory system.

What happened

Within 12 months, the company transformed 20 of its factories using the network-based approach. The results were measurable: line throughput increased by 10% across these transformed sites. This uplift represented a significant operational improvement, directly contributing to the company's ability to meet customer shipping expectations and improve overall manufacturing efficiency.

We have clearly seen the increase in performance.

— Maintenance technician, in an interview with McKinsey, 2023

The 10% improvement in line throughput was not an isolated gain at a single facility, but a consistent outcome replicated across the 20 transformed factories. This consistency validated the network approach: by standardising solutions to common problems and scaling them systematically, the company achieved reliable, repeatable results across its distributed operations.

The takeaway

The food manufacturer's experience demonstrates that a network-based approach to digital transformation can effectively scale solutions across multiple manufacturing sites. Rather than treating each factory as a separate transformation project, identifying and codifying common challenges across the network allows organisations to build and deploy standardised solutions efficiently. When pilot successes are captured in a reusable catalog and systematically rolled out across the network, the result is significant operational improvement—in this case, a 10% increase in line throughput within a single year. For manufacturers operating multiple facilities, this approach offers a practical pathway to moving beyond pilot paralysis and achieving company-wide performance gains.