Right Sizing Your European Operations to Reduce Cost

March 2026: Nowadays, the European market is a large but also complex and challenging marketplace. Given geopolitical and economic turmoil, companies are forced to review and right-size their manufacturing and distribution footprint.

Therefore - are you questioning yourself:

• Do we have the right manufacturing and logistics network in Europe?
• Why do we have still substantial operations in high labor cost markets (with labor shortages) whereas in CEE and Southern Europe costs of labor and talent are more abundant?
• Why do we have duplications of functions such as planning in each country?
• Do we have the right operating model in place – or should we insource or outsource our activities in the manufacturing and logistics domain?

During the recent webinar concrete roadmaps, solutions and real-life business cases were addressed. The following topics are included in the webinar deck:

• Changing Europe’s economic momentum: Business complexity is growing with more costs in labor markets and regulations
• Footprint & Network: De-globalization trend and European gravitational shifts eastward/southward require to rethink the manufacturing and distribution network? Is a single DC still the right answer or can one benefit from a more dispersed footprint leveraging lower costs locations as well. Does an in Region – Sell make sense?
• Performance and yield: Continuous pressure on sales, volume and market-share. Can you take-out costs by right-sizing the European business and regionalizing in-market functions into supply chain capability centers?  

Presented by

• Johan Beukema, Managing Partner & Global Head Location Strategies, contact Johan at Johan.Beukema@bciglobal.com
• Pieter de Wit, Partner, contact Pieter at Pieter.Wit@bciglobal.com
• Patrick Haex, Managing Partner, contact Patrick at Patrick.Haex@bciglobal.com