General Mills, Minneapolis, announced plans to restructure the company in order to maximize global scale.

When Jeff Harmening was promoted to president and COO in July, General Mills eliminated the international chief operating officer position.

"As we wrap up our 150^th anniversary year, we are ready to take the next step in our journey to truly operate as a global company and fully resource our best ideas to drive growth," says Ken Powell, chairman and CEO.

In addition to the four business groups— North America Retail (U.S. Retail & Canada), Europe & Australia, Asia & Latin America and Convenience Stores & Foodservice— the company is aligning its current dairy strategic brand unit (SBU) to this new global organization structure. For example, the Dairy SBU, based in France, will work with the group presidents to explore further opportunities to drive growth and innovation for the dairy platform globally.

The company will also enhance its growth capabilities in several areas, including strategic revenue management (SRM), e-commerce and marketing innovation, and intends to augment its current talent with external expertise in these areas over the next several months.

The new structure is expected to impact approximately 400-600 positions worldwide.

"We continue to prioritize both growth and returns," says Harmening. "The structural changes announced today will help us unlock global growth opportunities and go after them by efficiently restructuring our teams and processes. In addition, the capability investments and savings generated by these changes will help us deliver our fiscal 2018 adjusted operating profit margin target of 20%."