Thirteen forming cells, three shifts, and no forward view of capacity.

The situation

Nobody could say where the week’s work stood. Dispatch was worked by hand, handoffs between shifts were verbal only, and maintenance arrived by radio, sticky note or walk up, with the preventive schedule living in one technician’s calendar. Finance was no easier: vendors paid early, the largest customer paying at 71 days, an invoicing lag of two days or more, and the budget held in static spreadsheets.

What discovery found

Discovery measured the plant against a Management Operating System, meaning the routines, meetings, owners and measures that run the work day to day and week to week. It found that 27% of production elements did not exist and 60% needed upgrade, and that 79% of maintenance elements did not exist at all. Time studies put shift leads at 10% supervising and 30% idle, and mechanics at 0% planned wrench time and 64% reactive, with capacity utilization at 70 to 71%. The ledger baseline found $12M of working capital tied up, $6M of it recoverable, and the leadership survey found 46% of leaders disagreed on both the goals and the strategies of their own business.

What we did

All three principals worked the engagement. The operating rhythm went in first: roles and responsibilities written as behaviors, shift huddles with hour by hour boards across 13 cells and 3 shifts, structured handoffs, a plant wide action register, and a Thursday review run on plan, actual, variance and action. Behind the rhythm sat tools the team runs itself, among them a scheduling and adherence tool fed by the daily dispatch, a changeover hub covering 14 cells by 4 changeover types, a maintenance system taken from almost nothing to the system of record with 487 assets and 179 preventive records, and a finance hub carrying a 12 week cash flow forecast. Eight leadership workshops each closed with an assignment on the floor.