Frozen Dough

Kearney Case Study Prompt

Your client is a Consumer Packaged Goods company. More specifically, they produce frozen dough for uses in making bread loaves, pizza crusts, cookies, bagels, etc. This is a family-owned company with $2 billion in annual sales with two primary distribution channels.

You have been hired to assess a problem the company is experiencing with spoilage. The client is experiencing a significantly higher spoilage rate than that of competitors.

Competitors’ spoilage rates average about 2.5%, however, the client’s rate last year was 10%. They succeeded in reducing the spoilage rate to 7.5% by implementing a strict First-In-First-Out inventory management system at its warehouses and by instituting a program that carefully tracks the number of days left in the shelf life of the dough and donates it to charity, right before expiration, for a tax break.

Despite all the effort, they are still significantly higher than competitors. What can be done to further reduce the spoilage rate?

Kearney Case Study Overview

The client in this Kearney case study is a CPG company that produces frozen dough. The problem the company is experiencing is a high spoilage rate for its dough. In fact, the spoilage rate is significantly higher than competitors. Your job is to figure out how to reduce the spoilage rate.

In this beginner-level Kearney case, you can use the Profitability Framework to form your structure for the case. However, don’t rely solely on that singular framework – use a combination of your frameworks knowledge, creativity, and business acumen to create a custom framework for the problem.

Prepping for a first round interview? This is a case you would more likely see in a Kearney first round interview.

Interview Tips: Kearney

What does Kearney look for in its case candidates? A high level of comfort with numbers.

Use our math drills if you need to shore up your mental math.

One tip to help set you up for success: after each case, identify one weakness or area of growth to work on.

Need tailored guidance in your case interview prep? Book a session with an ex-MBB coach.