Reducing a supermarket chain’s costs A few years ago, the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain asked management consultancy Cobalt to find ways of significantly reducing its operating costs and increasing the turnover in its stores. The team, at first made up of four Cobalt project managers and five Sainsbury’s colleagues, was challenged to make ￡300m of savings within five years. Beginning with a pilot exercise which cut the cost to the company of own-brand olive oil by ￡400,000, the team looked at a number of products and found potential savings in many areas, including stock reduction and distribution changes. To motivate the team, whenever a saving was recorded on a board in the centre of Cobalt’s open-plan office, everyone clapped the team achievement. As the project progressed, it expanded, with Cobalt recruiting and training extra team members to look at more products at the same time. After just over a year, the team began training Sainsbury’s 130 trading managers and buyers in its recommended approach. With savings now over ￡100m, Sainsbury’s was so pleased that it decided to expand the approach to the whole of its operations. Cobalt is now driving a team of 50 Sainsbury’s colleagues towards a new target: corporate savings of ￡700m. The price of olive oil was reduced for customers.

A. Right
B．Wrong
C．Doesn’t say