3
Industrial bakery facilities
Rescuing a Failing Bakery Investment Through Rapid Operational Turnaround
When an investment company’s newly acquired bakery portfolio faced catastrophic equipment failures, productivity plummeted by more than 50% across three industrial facilities. Working with the bakery’s in-house teams, EFESO mobilized within 72 hours to reverse millions in monthly losses. The transformation restored operations serving over 30,000 retail locations nationwide.
Industry: Food & Beverage
Service: Factory Planning
Service: Manufacturing
Service: Operational Excellence
Service: Operations Strategy and Transformation
Service: People and Organization
Service: Profitability Programs
Service: Restructuring & Turnaround
Service: Supply Chain
Our Client
The bakery is based in the US and manufactures ready-to-eat baked foods including Danish pastries, muffins, cinnamon rolls, brownies and bars for grocery in-store bakeries and foodservice providers.
The company supplies major brands and global retailers across all 50 states in the USA, through co-packing partnerships and direct distribution.
+30K
Retail locations served
50
States distribution coverage
“We're very thankful for you guys. I honestly did not know what to do until you got here and you helped me to develop a plan.
“
The Challenge
The investment firm acquired the bakery in spring 2024, inheriting operations that appeared healthy but concealed critical maintenance failures that would soon threaten the entire investment.
- Deferred maintenance crisis: Previous management had stopped performing equipment maintenance, implementing only short-term fixes to maintain appearances through the sale, leaving machinery in severe disrepair with no preventive maintenance program
- Operational collapse: Equipment failures cascaded into excessive manual operations, extremely high labor costs and workforce turnover driven by low morale and expectations that “things don’t get fixed”
- Compliance and quality breakdown: Operations suffered from sanitation standard violations, recipes not being followed, equipment not meeting OSHA standards and regulatory non-compliance across multiple areas
Real Results Achieved Together
Working alongside the in-house teams, we transformed failing operations into a profitable, high-performing bakery network. The comprehensive turnaround touched every aspect of operations from maintenance to workforce capability, establishing sustainable systems for long-term success.
+50%
Wrench time productivity
3-4x
Cases per man hour increase
17% to 50%
Maintenance productivity improvement
Transformation Impact
- Achieved transition from losing millions monthly to profitable operations
- Elevated supplier status to top five ranking with a major retailer
- Established 100% employee-based maintenance workforce, eliminating third-party dependency
Our Approach
Our rapid mobilization began with implementing the glidepath methodology to identify over 300 initiatives for equipment restoration. We formed five integrated workstreams:
- Operations, for discipline and performance control systems
- Maintenance and reliability, for work process development
- Sanitation for compliance discipline
- Supply chain for production planning optimization
- Capital projects for glidepath management
The transformation included developing a comprehensive preventive maintenance program from scratch, creating shutdown planning processes with 8-week staged requirements and implementing CMMS with complete asset hierarchy identification. We embedded a problem-solving discipline focused on root cause analysis rather than symptom fixes, establishing an RCA program for sustainable solutions.
Working with the investment firm, we redesigned the organization for productivity, established labor standards for each operation type, and implemented performance control systems including KPIs, operating discipline and standard work. During contract renegotiations with major suppliers and customers adjusted production schedules to minimize changeovers and downtime.
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Facing Similar Manufacturing Turnaround Challenges?
- Struggling with equipment reliability while losing money on every production run
- Seeing the potential for transformation but lacking the roadmap to get there
- Ready to build operational excellence that delivers measurable financial impact
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