Your plant makes a thousand decisions.
Four of them move the numbers.
Labor, automation, scheduling, sourcing. Made one at a time on a spreadsheet, they look fine and collide in production. Modeled as one system, before the capital is committed, they are where the millions move. This is the record of how they actually behave on the floor.
Of everything a plant decides, four move the numbers.
Each one looks self-contained on paper. On the floor they interact, and the interactions are where the savings leak. Pick the decision you are making.
Labor
Booked as a headcount number. It behaves like a system: which crew, on which line, against which schedule.
Automation
The question is never automate or not. It is which constraint the automation moves, and whether the next one eats the savings.
Scheduling
The cheapest capacity in the building, and the one most plants leave on the table.
Sourcing
A unit-cost win that adds floor minutes is a loss. Sourcing is a throughput decision in disguise.
Most plants make these four blind. Here is what they look like up close.
The Variability Tax a 30-Day Model Cannot See
A packaged-meat producer had four sausage lines in one hall.
The Labor Savings Nobody Scheduled Time to Claim
A plant leader at a Midwest protein processor had been sitting on the same opportunity for four years.
Your Catalog Grows by Addition, Your Schedule by Multiplication
A frozen prepared-foods packer is three months into converting its corrugated box program, and one format is holding up the line.
The Spec Change Is Never Where You Made It
A Midwest protein processor and one of its packers spent a morning on a single document: the film protocol.
From reactive to orchestrated.
Every plant decides at one of four levels: reactive, scheduled, modeled, orchestrated. Good is modeled. Great is orchestrated, a floor that runs the model before it runs the line.
I model manufacturing decisions before the money is committed, and find the capacity executives didn’t know they had.