Kimberly-Clark: Product Development

New Disciplines For Product Development Projects

"Leornian helped us to achieve a huge change in project culture very quickly, and in doing so saved us a lot of money."

Rick Woodward, Recruitment & Development Director, Kimberly-Clark

Background

Kimberly-Clark is the world's largest manufacturer of packaged tissue products with a turnover over $13bn and some of the best-known brands in the world, including Andrex, Kleenex Tissues and Huggies Nappies.

Problem

A number of European product development projects failed. Consultants criticised the disciplines in the selection, leadership, and accountability of European projects and urged the new European president to take action.

Implication

The failures affected global results - leading to the company issuing a profit warning on Wall Street.

Aim

To find ways of introducing a phased project template, which would introduce more formal disciplines in initial project selection and key decision points throughout.

Results

An evaluation six months later found that the system was:

Saving Kimberly-Clark Europe money by helping to clarify business strategy and priorities.
Established as a robust tool to aid decision-making in projects.
Helping project leaders to 'do it right'.
Speeding up more complex projects.

This success was due to:

High commitment from sector presidents.
Widely based launch briefing and obvious enthusiasm of the core project team.

Our Approach

Stage 1: formation of a cross-functional core project team to write the project charter and outline plan
Stage 2: development of the new project process
Stage 3: establishment and use of key stakeholder communication to achieve buy-in
Stage 4: European launch of new process
Stage 5: process implemented
Stage 6: evaluation

What Rick Woodward, Recruitment & Development Director, says now:

"Leornian helped us to achieve a huge change in project culture very quickly, and in doing so saved us a lot of money. They provided project leadership expertise and formed an extremely flexible working partnership with us to invent a robust 'Steps & Gates' process, which has now been adopted by our US colleagues - a real achievement of global influence!

Together we achieved a highly successful project: on time, to budget, with considerable quality. It remains a powerful tool that is essential to give us project success - as our track record shows."

Last updated: 04 July 2006