Client

Year

Lean

Deliverables

In 1970, the venerable Champagne house, Moët & Chandon, was under the direction of the pioneering Robert-Jean de Vogue. He decided that the key to expanding their business was to export know-how, not wine. While exploring the world’s most promising wine regions, he discovered the relatively unknown Napa Valley and met John Wright, a passionate businessman with a keen interest in California wine. Two years later, in 1973, they established Domaine Chandon and changed the course of history for Napa Valley.

Chandon’s wine style was established as a blend between Moët & Chandon’s winemaking traditions and the vibrancy of California fruit. That style has persevered, ensuring the crafting of a distinctive and exceptional-quality wine year after year.

What started as just ‘discovery’ turned into so much more.  Domaine Chandon hired us to discover how they could benefit from Lean and identify the processes that could be enhanced.  During this discovery phase we were able to help:

• Reduce change-over time by 83%
• Build trust into a warehouse process which resulted in elimination of 2 hours of data analysis and crunching by 2 people, every day
• Reduce waste in a financial process to eliminate 5 days of financial rework every month
• 5S some of their office and operations areas, among other things

A key change was the way we were able to positively impact the relationship between management and operations by implementing a process for identifying and solving one suggestion/problem a day.  By using Lean principles, we were able to further solidify this precious bond.