Survey
The Operations Survey
A plant walk and interviews, with no data extract. What breaks first when volume doubles, from the people who run the floor.
Learn moreWhere we look
What breaks if volume doubles?
We look for the place delivery gives way first, which is rarely the place the last consultant examined.
What is capped here
The constraint here is delivery and capacity. When demand outruns what the operation can deliver, new machines and new people take the longest to add, so the fastest capacity is usually the capacity you already have, spent on the work that pays. Doubling volume also exposes the parts of an operation that were never built to carry weight: the schedule that lives in one person's head, the quality escape that shows up only at scale, the site that measures itself differently from the others. We find where the operation gives way first. On a plant floor, the search includes the time lost to changeovers, which counts against overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
High volume parts often subsidize the OEE impact of changeovers on low volume parts when no change-over time is considered.
The lanes
- Manufacturing. Processes, capacity, throughput, quality and corrective action, and the complexity nobody chose.
- Delivery. What breaks first under load, and the work only one person knows how to do.
- Measurement. One definition for each key performance indicator (KPI), used the same way at every site.
In this area
Survey, blueprint and build in operations.
Blueprint
The Manufacturing Blueprint
The few moves that carry most of your gross profit, tested against your own numbers and your own team before a dollar moves.
Learn moreBuild
The Manufacturing Build
A week a month on site with your team, testing the Blueprint's initiatives in real production until they hold.
Learn moreWhere to go from here
One hour of your time, no charge: fifteen minutes on the Growth Check, then a forty-five-minute video call. We read every answer before the call.