The hand-off is often the operating problem
Functions can meet their own targets while customers experience delay between them.
Read the essayThe leadership review
Nicholas Bouchard
Chief Operating OfficerCanada · Global perspectiveVolume 03
Notes from practice
- NOTE I
Operating model redesign
An organisation had grown through local improvisation, leaving hand-offs between commercial and delivery teams unclear.
- NOTE II
Delivery reliability
Delivery teams were responding to recurring exceptions as if each were new.
A leadership conviction
Operations should make dependable delivery repeatable. I make ownership and constraints visible, listen to frontline evidence and improve the whole workflow rather than optimise one function at another's expense.
- On-time delivery
- 97.6%
- Up from 81% across the network
- Cost removed
- ₹1,150 Cr
- Without reducing service quality
- Sites run
- 64
- Plants, warehouses and service centres
- Safety incidents
- −48%
- Over three operating years
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
In the boardroom
- Harrow & Vale IndustriesIndependent Director · 2023 — Present
- The Manufacturing Skills CouncilAdvisory Board Member · 2020 — Present
Recognition
- Operations Leader of the YearThe Operations Excellence Awards · 2024
- Supply Chain Resilience AwardCapital & Governance Quarterly · 2022
In conversation
- “From 81% to 97% on-time without a single new plant”The Operations Excellence Journal · 2025
- “What boards should see in an operations review”The Boardroom Review · 2024
- “Episode 109 — Keeping the promise to customers”The Leadership Ledger podcast · 2023
Turns ambition into an operating system people can actually run.
Continue the conversation
Ideas are tested in conversation.
For board, advisory and speaking invitations, and for readers who want to take an argument further.
- Board appointments
- Advisory roles
- Speaking invitations
office@nicholasbouchard.example