The Wall Street Journal (April 24) recently featured a front-page story on Procter & Gamble's acquisition of Gillette. This paragraph sums up not only this merger, but many others in the consumer products and other industries:
"Among all the products brought together in Procter & Gamble Co.'s 2005 acquisition of Gillette, two carried particularly high expectations because of their natural fit: the world's No. 1 toothbrush and the world's No. 2 toothpaste. But putting together Gillette's Oral-B and P&G's Crest turned out to be more complicated than it looked."
Anyone that has survived an M&A knows it is tough, grueling work. It's not a time for business as usual, but a perfect time to reach for that clean sheet of paper and craft the right supply chain response. The task is to design mergers properly up front.
Source: AMR Research, http://amrresearch.com