Senior advisory for regulated and complex businesses.

The challenge. A top-5 global pharmaceutical company needed to standardise and document its end-to-end global operations before it could pursue Lean Six Sigma improvements and digitalisation at scale. Operations spanned eight distinct workstreams — order fulfilment, warehousing, command centre, master data, vendor management, sustainability, compliance, and digital capabilities — but the existing process landscape was fragmented, undocumented in places, and held in silos. Without a single source of truth, neither continuous improvement nor process mining could begin.

The work. Lariat embedded a senior PMO into the programme. We established the governance, planning cadence, RACI model, and stakeholder engagement framework — and ran the operating rhythm against weekly status, escalations, and sponsor reporting throughout. From there, we led 38 processes across Tier 1 and Tier 2 from stakeholder interviews through validation and approval, and into the central process repository as the agreed single source of truth. Where workstream scope was ambiguous, we drove the alignment sessions to resolve it. Where downstream Lean Six Sigma and digitalisation work depended on Phase 1 outputs, we sequenced delivery so the handover was clean.

The outcome. By project close, Tier 1 was fully delivered against the agreed scope, the central process repository was live, and the foundation for Phase 2 was in place. Phase 2 — Lean Six Sigma analysis and digitalisation workshops — launched on schedule, on the structure Lariat built. The client now has the documented baseline required for process mining, organisational design, and digital workshop prioritisation across global operations.

The challenge. A global medtech group had decided to combine two related device portfolios — historically run as separate businesses with distinct ERPs, supply chains and commercial models — into a single regional operating model. The change required a redesigned logistical and financial flow built around a shared ERP and a new in-country distribution structure, replacing a centralised European hub model with local distribution entities holding inventory in-market. Medtech integrations carry process complexity that pharma or FMCG programmes do not: installed-base equipment movements, consignment stock at hospitals and clinics, traceability obligations, returns that often flow into controlled destruction rather than resale, and a spares-and-consumables lifecycle that sits alongside the primary device flow. Several emerging-market geographies were in scope, with one selected as the integration pilot.

The work. Working inside the client's continuous-improvement function and partnering with a programme-office analyst, Lariat ran daily working sessions with operations, customer service and finance SMEs to elicit the real-world As-Is across the end-to-end value chain: customer order, intercompany inbound, outbound, inventory and destruction, returns, and the field-equipment and consumables flows specific to medical devices. We produced colour-coded Level-2 process maps to a single visual standard, with documentation events (sales order, invoice, delivery note, intercompany pricing trigger, serial/lot capture) surfaced as discrete steps so the maps could support both ERP configuration and downstream regulatory and control mapping. We modelled the To-Be flows for the highest-risk processes — surfacing where the new in-market entity layer changed billing, intercompany pricing, master-data ownership, and the returns-versus-destruction decision distinctive to regulated medical devices.

The outcome. By the end of the engagement the programme had a sign-off-ready As-Is baseline for the pilot market, a To-Be reference for the highest-risk flows, and a decision-grade view of which ERP candidate could support the proposed model with the least re-engineering. The pilot maps became the template applied to the remaining focus markets in subsequent programme waves.

The challenge. A top-tier pharmaceutical group's European release function — the QP certification step that gates finished goods into the European market — was consistently missing internal target lead times. Several factors were converging at once: new-product-launch volumes from non-EU manufacturing sites were rising; the certification team had absorbed significant turnover, partly as colleagues moved across to support COVID-vaccine programmes; and the existing prioritisation model couldn't surface which batches actually needed acceleration to avoid stock-outs. The business was concerned about patient supply, competent-authority perception, and credibility of the planning numbers used downstream.

The work. Working inside the global supply-chain function, Lariat ran a Lean Six Sigma DMAIC across the end-to-end EU release process — mapping the as-is flow from goods receipt at EU sites through inspection, testing and QP certification, segmented by supply-chain archetype (EU-origin vs. mutual-recognition vs. third-country imports, finished vs. semi-finished). We quantified actual stop-over-time and inspection durations by archetype, identified the disproportionate contributors to overall lead time, and benchmarked them against contractual and clinical need. We redesigned the prioritisation framework — including a clear escalation pyramid, segment classifications, and decision criteria — so that planners, release scientists and supply-chain leads had one source of truth on which batches mattered most. We defined revised target lead times by archetype, the standard work and confirmation steps to hit them, and the monthly performance reporting that would let leadership see whether the new operating model was actually holding.

The outcome. The programme landed agreed revised target lead times by supply-chain archetype, a prioritisation and escalation framework adopted across the release and planning communities, and a monthly performance baseline that made the new operating model defensible to supply-chain leadership and downstream stakeholders. The work created the foundation on which further automation and resource-flex initiatives were sequenced.