Challenge
Every technical change to a marketed product sets off a chain of work: regulatory filings across markets, validation, bridging stock, and the attention of the teams who run manufacturing, quality, and supply chain. Our client's portfolio generated changes faster than the organization could absorb them, and a meaningful share traced back to portfolio decisions rather than technical necessity. The cost compounded: capital consumed, people redirected, and inventory built to bridge every transition.
Approach
Scimitar redesigned the portfolio principles that decide which changes enter the system. Working with portfolio, regulatory, manufacturing, and supply leaders, we established lifecycle-aware rules to gate change approval, bundled filings to limit regulatory impact, and installed governance to weigh each proposed change against the capital, people, and inventory it consumes. Change decisions moved upstream: choices once made change-by-change in execution now happen at the portfolio level, before the work begins.
Impact
Unnecessary technical changes fell 15%, removed at the source. Each avoided change spared the filings, bridging stock, and validation effort it would have consumed, and returned that capital and capacity to the portfolio. The governance is operational and the portfolio principles are applied to every new change proposed by product teams, keeping product availability predictable across global markets.
