Transforming HealthTech Production from Make-to-Order to Make-to-Stock

Executive Summary

Transformation of a HealthTech production model from make-to-order to make-to-stock for a product portfolio connected to €500M annual portfolio value. The Program focused on reducing customer order-to-delivery lead time from three months to one week while improving inventory turnover, packaging efficiency, and transportation cost performance. The work covered production concept redesign, product standardization, modular design, merge center setup, packaging concept development, warehouse strategy, inventory logic, WMS integration, stakeholder governance, and operational readiness. Outcomes included a 92% lead-time reduction, 50% increase in inventory turnover, 20% reduction in packaging costs, and 15% reduction in transportation costs.

Challenge

The existing make-to-order model created long delivery lead times and limited responsiveness to customer demand. Customer order-to-delivery time was approximately three months, which created operational pressure across production, warehousing, logistics, sales, and customer-facing functions. The core challenges included: transformation from make-to-order to make-to-stock reduction of lead time from three months to one week redesign of product and production logic to support stock-based fulfillment maintaining customization capability while increasing standardization setup of merge centers for faster assembly and distribution development of new packaging concepts redesign of warehouse strategy and inventory management alignment of production, supply chain, warehouse, sales, packaging, and leadership stakeholders ensuring operational readiness for a new fulfillment model The Program required a full operating model shift, not only a planning adjustment. Product design, inventory logic, packaging, warehouse flow, logistics, and stakeholder decision-making had to be aligned into one executable delivery model.

Role & Scope

As Program Manager, the role covered Program governance, workstream leadership, stakeholder alignment, production concept redesign, product standardization, packaging optimization, warehouse strategy, inventory planning, WMS integration, training, and operational readiness. The Program involved production, supply chain, warehouse, logistics, packaging, sales, product, quality, and leadership stakeholders. Responsibilities included chairing the Program rhythm, managing decisions and escalations, coordinating dependencies across workstreams, tracking readiness, and driving execution toward the new make-to-stock operating model.

Approach

The Program was structured around a clear delivery performance target: reducing lead time from three months to one week. This target was translated into coordinated workstreams across product, production, inventory, packaging, warehouse, and logistics. The approach included: Program governance and workstream setup feasibility analysis for make-to-stock transformation product standardization modular design logic production concept redesign merge center setup packaging concept development warehouse layout and storage strategy inventory management redesign WMS integration operational process definition employee training and readiness preparation performance tracking and stakeholder reporting A key part of the work was balancing standardization with the need for customer-specific configuration. Product and process logic were redesigned so that stock-based availability could improve delivery speed without creating uncontrolled complexity downstream.

Key Contributions

• Established the Program structure for the transformation from make-to-order to make-to-stock.
• Translated the lead-time reduction target into executable workstreams across production, warehouse, packaging, logistics, product, and supply chain.
• Coordinated product standardization and modular design to support stock-based fulfillment.
• Led the development of merge centers to enable faster assembly, consolidation, and distribution.
• Developed new packaging concepts to reduce cost, improve handling, and protect products during transport.
• Redesigned warehouse concepts, storage layouts, and inventory logic to support improved availability and turnover.
• Coordinated WMS integration, process definition, employee training, and operational readiness activities.
• Managed stakeholder governance, decision-making, dependencies, and escalation across the transformation.

Impact

• 92% reduction in lead time from customer order to delivery
• Delivery lead time reduced from three months to one week
• 50% increase in inventory turnover
• 20% reduction in packaging costs
• 15% reduction in transportation costs
• Product portfolio connected to €500M annual portfolio value
• The Program created a faster and more responsive production and delivery model. It improved product availability, reduced customer waiting time, strengthened fulfillment performance, and aligned production, warehouse, packaging, and supply chain logic around a more reliable operating model.

Capabilities Demonstrated

• Program leadership
• Production model transformation
• Make-to-stock implementation
• Supply chain transformation
• Product standardization
• Modular design
• Merge center setup
• Packaging optimization
• Warehouse strategy
• Inventory management
• WMS integration
• Operational readiness