Continua a minha leitura de "The Crux - How Leaders Become Strategists" de Richard P. Rumelt. Uma das coisas que gosto em Rumelt é quando ele conta casos negativos e explica-os. Para mim é quase sempre um alívio, no dia a dia vejo tanto coisa que não compreendo, que para mim não tem sentido, que às vezes penso que o problema é meu. Rumelt repõe a minha sanidade. Por exemplo, ainda ontem foi o suposto plano estratégico do BNP.
Um desses casos é o da Dean Foods, uma empresa de produtos lácteos, o maior produtor de leite nos Estados Unidos. Quem pesquisar este blogue com a palavra leite verá que há anos escrevo sobre o tema seguindo uma lógica contrária ao mainstream.
Ler Rumelt sobre A Dean Foods resultou em:
"Dean’s constituent parts were forty to sixty small milk processors. [Moi ici: Isto faz-me lembrar a Gráfica Mirandela. Se o negócio é volume, se o negócio é eficiência, têm de ser grandes unidades de processamento de leite, não muitas pequenas] Some were mom-and-pop operations; some were larger. The processors gathered milk from dairy farmers, pasteurized it, homogenized it, and performed varying degrees of separation. ... The roll-up gave Dean Foods more than sixty different brands of milk and butter, some fairly well known and some very local [Moi ici: Sessenta marcas?!?!?!]
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Since the late 1990s, fluid milk consumption in the United States had been gradually declining, on average about 2–3 percent per year, with ups and downs along the way.
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Dairy farmers as a whole generally produced excess milk that was often just poured into the ground. Milk prices varied with demand, the size of the herd of cows, and the price of feed. Demand was pushed and pulled by fashions for cheese, yogurt, and protein powders.
The fundamental problem faced by Dean Foods was that it wasn’t really a national company. Competition was local.
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About 80 percent of all fluid milk sold was private-label products with no national brand names. [Moi ici: Custo, custo, custo. As marcas não têm nada a ver com o negócio] Having a national footprint did nothing to increase bargaining power.
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To deal with this set of issues, the company sought to increase its operational efficiency. [Moi ici: A solução fácil, rápida e ... errada. Prolonga a vida da empresa ligada à máquina] It closed some processing plants and adjusted supply routes. It established a system of “key performance indicators” (KPIs) that measured performance and progress weekly and monthly. The KPIs covered volume, revenue, sales discounts, expenses, elements of cost, and customer margins by district.
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Milk prices are usually capped by surplus production. Pressing the existing system for efficiency was not going to solve these fundamental challenges.
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Beginning in 2014, Dean Foods faced a trifecta of problems. China cut back sharply on its milk imports, and the EU lifted its milk-production quotas. Russia banned milk imports. Surplus milk was spilled into ditches in the United States even as consumer demand took a downward step. The company doubled down on its efficiency goals.
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[Moi ici: Entretanto, em 2019 a Dean Foods pediu protecção contra os credores] What could Dean Foods have done differently?
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Rolling up dairy processors did not solve the problems of excess production or declining demand. [Moi ici: Como não pensar no aperto que os produtores de leite sofrem por cá porque ninguém tem coragem de dizer a verdade e olhar o assunto de frente] Nor did it magically make a national business out of forty to sixty local processors. Dean Foods’ raft of KPIs could not make fundamental improvements in a host of local patched-together businesses. Measuring something doesn’t always mean it can be improved.
Had the product been pickles or corn chips, the original roll-up might have worked. But hard-to-brand, locally processed, private-label fluid milk?” [Moi ici: Como não recordar O leite é a commodity alimentar por excelência]
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