LC Automation – Industrial Distribution
Operational Improvement | Process Discovery
Identifying hidden inefficiencies and cost reduction opportunities in the Order-to-Cash process of an industrial distribution company.
Client Context
LC Automation is a mid-sized GB industrial distributor specializing in maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) supplies.
The company generates approximately $32 million in annual revenue, employs 105 people and processes around 16,000 customer orders per year.
Challenge
The Order-to-Cash (O2C) process involves multiple departments, from order entry and inventory management to shipping, invoicing and payment collection.
Limited visibility into end-to-end process execution concealed inefficiencies, including order processing delays, rework, billing errors and payment collection issues.
These problems generated substantial operational costs while remaining difficult to identify and quantify.
Approach
BPM CYT's Process Discovery methodology combined structured analysis of business documentation with process expertise to reconstruct how work was actually performed.
The approach identified inconsistencies, operational bottlenecks and improvement opportunities across the Order-to-Cash process.
The analysis also evaluated the economic impact of identified inefficiencies, helping management prioritize improvement initiatives.
Outcome
BPM CYT's analysis estimated approximately $290,000 in annual costs associated with process inefficiencies.
The identified improvement opportunities represented annual savings of $120,000.
This project illustrates how Process Discovery can reveal hidden operational costs and provide a quantified business case for targeted process improvements.