Every mill had a process. Nobody had added up what the differences cost.

Every mill had a process. Nobody had added up what the differences cost.

A global pulp and paper producer of about €10B in revenue set out to harmonise supplier quality and claim processes across ten mills, to improve efficiency and audit readiness. Ten mills, seven material categories, three countries.

Each mill verified incoming material its own way and escalated claims on its own judgement. That is not neglect. It is what a group looks like after it has grown by acquisition, when every site arrived with a process already working inside it.

The case page states the position plainly. There was no unified view on how quality was verified or when to escalate claims. Documentation was scattered, checks inconsistent, and informal resolutions common.

The number that came out of the work is €5m, described on the page as cost impact uncovered, identified as annual losses from poor raw material quality and process fragmentation across four mills. Identified, not recovered. Nobody inside the business had seen that figure before, and the useful question is why not.

The only people who could fix it were the people running the mills

The case page gives the reason without dressing it up. Mill and procurement teams lacked the bandwidth to redesign fragmented practices while managing daily operations.

That sentence is worth sitting with, because it answers the question every Director asks about work like this before they ask anything else. It was not that nobody understood the problem. Ten mills' worth of people understood it precisely, in local detail we never reached and never needed to.

What none of them had was ten mills of simultaneous attention. A harmonisation finding does not exist until somebody holds all ten processes in view at once and compares them line by line. The people capable of that comparison were each accountable for one of the ten, and for keeping it running this week.

There is a second reason, and it follows from the first. Informal resolutions were common. An informal resolution is efficient locally and invisible globally. It settles the batch, keeps the supplier relationship warm, and leaves nothing behind. Ten mills resolving informally produce a group that feels calm and cannot prove anything to an auditor.

An 8 to 10 week sprint, 30+ interviews, three countries

Thirty or more interviews were conducted across three countries analysed, covering ten mills and seven material categories.

The interviews were not a satisfaction survey. They were the only way to establish what each mill meant by words that all ten of them used. Where a document said a check had been done, we asked what was checked, against what, by whom, and what happened when it failed.

The work had three named tasks, and the order is the method. Map and compare the current supplier quality and claim processes across ten mills and seven material categories. Identify and synthesise recurring gaps and pain points, specifically around certificate of analysis usage, inspection practices and claim criteria. Then develop and recommend harmonised future-state process maps and digital handshakes, to improve traceability and audit readiness.

Map first, find the pattern second, design third. The €5m surfaced in the middle step, which is the step most transformation programmes compress.

Four figures, and only one of them carries a qualifier

Three of the four are counts of work delivered. The fourth is the one to read slowly. The page says cost impact uncovered and identified annual losses. It does not say saved, recovered or banked, and neither does this piece, because the sprint ended before any of it was actioned.

Note also where it sits. The €5m concentrates in four mills, not ten. That is a finding in its own right, and it is the reason the recommendation below has a pilot in it.

Over €5m a year, arriving through three doors at once

The page names three ways the arrangement cost money: ongoing losses from poor-quality materials, weak traceability for audits, and slow resolution of supplier issues.

Those are three different kinds of cost, and that is precisely why the total stayed hidden. The first is a production number. The second is a compliance exposure that costs nothing at all until the week it costs a great deal. The third is procurement time and working capital.

No single function owns all three. A mill manager sees the first. A quality or compliance lead sees the second. Procurement sees the third. Each of them is looking at something that, in their own context, reads as ordinary operating cost rather than as a signal.

Add the three together across ten mills and the figure is over €5m a year. Keep them apart and you have three tolerable numbers and no case for change.

One more line is worth naming, because it is the mechanism rather than the cost. Every informal resolution removes a data point. The thinner the record gets, the more reasonable it is to resolve informally next time, and the harder it becomes to argue for the fix. The arrangement protects itself.

Harmonise the vocabulary, then the handshakes

What eight to ten weeks could not settle

How much of the €5m is recoverable. The work identified the cost. It did not model how much of it survives a harmonised process, and anybody offering that number before the pilot runs is guessing.

Whether those four mills are the worst or the best documented. They are where the loss was traceable. A mill with thinner records would show less and might carry more.

What suppliers do next. A single group specification and a recorded claim process change the negotiating position on both sides of the table. That sat outside the sprint.

Whether audit readiness actually improves. The future-state maps improve traceability by design. Whether they improve it in an audit depends on adoption across ten sites, which is a different programme with a different length.

Sources and method

Every figure in this piece is taken from the SprintlyWorks case page for Standardizing Supplier Quality Workflows Across Sites, September 2025. An 8 to 10 week sprint for a €10B global pulp and paper producer. Three countries analysed, 30+ interviews conducted, ten mills, seven material categories.

The €5m is reproduced with the wording the page uses: cost impact uncovered, identified as annual losses from poor raw material quality and process fragmentation across four mills. It is not a saving and it is not a run rate.

The client is described and not named. Nothing about their suppliers, sites, specifications or claim thresholds appears here.