What Rockwool teaches you about complexity

3 min read

27. November 2025

In 2020, Rockwool reduced their SKU's from over 100.000 to around 39.000 - without compromising service levels or profitability.

The key was to create an overview of their extensive product portfolio and what it cost them in efficiency, resources, and bottom line.

Unhealthy complexity

Rockwool Group is one of the world's leading suppliers of stone wool, but their work with complexity management is also relevant for SMEs.

Because even if you don't have 100.000 SKUs yourself, complexity grows rapidly in the shadows.

A large part of the complexity at Rockwool was due to their extensive assortment which included a multitude of customized solutions as well as regional divisions, each managing their own product assortments and associated local regulations.

As the company grew and added new product variants, customers, and markets, complexity increased - and this heightened the requirements for efficiency and oversight.

"Every time a product was added, it was because there was demand," states Alexandria Trattner, former Supply Chain Specialist at Rockwool, to DTU.

“But in the industry sector, generally, it's problematic that companies only have procedures for initiating new types of production - similar procedures for phasing out these products are missing” (read more).

Rockwool realized they had lost oversight and lacked insight into their customers' and products' profitability. More specifically, they noticed that:

The complexity created friction in both production and planning.
Many products were similar to each other, had low demand, or were only sold to very few customers.

Despite this, the organization spent time and resources maintaining them.

Also read: Guide: How to achieve profitable growth

Data-based prioritization

Therefore, former Supply Chain Director Martin Berg, in collaboration with Alexandria Trattner, set out to examine the extent of the complexity.

The first step was a classic double ABC analysis, which quickly revealed that 10% of the items created 80% of the value, while up to 60% of the items contributed less than 5%.

With that data in hand, Rockwool made a strategic decision and phased out between 33% and 50% of their products.

This prioritization freed up resources, reduced complexity in planning and production, and improved oversight across the entire supply chain.

It turned out that this prioritization contributed significantly to customer satisfaction and profitability.

Find out where your company stands: Complexity kills growth in your business.

What does this mean for your business?

Rockwool's story tells us that Supply Chain Management is a daily balancing act between costs, revenue, and profit.

Especially when you're growing, there's a great need for insight, overview, and prioritization to avoid getting lost in your complexity.

When even large companies find these challenges complex, it's a significant challenge for SMEs to understand the lack of profitability that unhealthy complexity causes.

The main difference is that SMEs often lack the resources to compensate for complexity. As a result, they feel the consequences in both efficiency and customer satisfaction much faster than larger organisations.

Often there's also a lack of clear understanding of what measures are necessary to solve these problems.

It's essential that you ask yourselves:

Are all customers equally important?
Are all products equally important?
What can we promise the customer – and what can't we promise the customer?

In doing that, you quickly realize that a structured analysis of the portfolio can be the first step in the fight against unhealthy complexity.

As long as you have the courage to act!

Download our guide to understanding complexity and profitable growth

Inact as a partner

We see time and again how smaller companies can achieve significant results when they dare to tackle complexity - not to make everything simple, but to make the right things simple.

That's exactly the core of our approach at Inact - to help you convert data insights into action.

Because valid data is irrelevant if you don't know what to do with it.

Do you want to know more about how complexity affects your business and what you can do about it? Have a look at our End-to-End solution and find out.

Take the first step today

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