Mondial & Co helps industrial group strengthen governance with Asian manufacturer
When a leading Middle Eastern industrial supplier faced cultural and operational misalignment with its outsourced East Asian manufacturer, the relationship began creating risks that threatened delivery. Mondial & Co was brought in to help rebuild trust, restore governance and lay the foundation for a mutual working relationship.
The client, a leading Middle Eastern industrial supplier within a diversified regional group, had won a multi-year contract worth more than $200 million to supply machinery components to one of the world’s leading industrial equipment manufacturers.
Delivering on the contract depended on an outsourced East Asian manufacturer. However, within the first six months, the operating relationship between the two business units had begun to break down. Communication was routinely lost in translation – both linguistically and culturally. Deadlines were missed, and payment terms became an ongoing source of dispute.
When the Middle Eastern industrial group convened a joint alignment meeting to reset the relationship, the East Asian manufacturer did not attend. Its business culture approached formal joint governance differently, creating a further obstacle to resolving the issues.
Meanwhile, the buyer escalated the missed deadlines to the group’s leadership. The contract was at risk, as was the group’s standing as a supplier of choice for major international industrial buyers.
Restoring governance
Mondial & Co, an international management consulting firm headquartered in Istanbul, was brought in to restore governance across the value chain and protect the client contract.
The engagement ran for six months across three parallel workstreams. The first was a diagnostic across the three-party operating relationship, mapping failure points across payment terms, delivery timelines, communication protocols, escalation paths, and cultural expectations. The second was the design of a new cross-border governance model built for the two operating cultures involved: redesigned payment terms, graded escalation protocols, mandatory joint reviews with cultural facilitation, and clear accountabilities on both sides.
The third was direct engagement with both the manufacturer’s leadership and the buyer’s account team, working in a shared operating language while translating cultural expectations across the two sides.
The impact
Within six months, deliveries against the contract were restored from 62% to 98% on-time performance. Formal escalations to group leadership dropped from monthly to zero. Building on the turnaround, the buyer withdrew the escalation and reconfirmed the contract.
Fast forward to today, and the governance model established during the engagement continues to run the operational relationship between the client and the East Asian manufacturer. The model has since then been extended to a second major international account secured by the industrial group.
