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.
Twelve-Month Lead Times Make Capacity a Forecast Decision
Here is the uncomfortable arithmetic of food plant capacity in this cycle: the equipment you will need next winter has to be ordered around now.
A Flat Price in a Falling Market Is a Finding
Preparing for a sourcing kickoff on molded plastic components, a project team pulled the pricing history a prior review had assembled.
Take the Free Labor Savings First
Walking a sous-vide protein facility with an equipment integrator, the scoping conversation kept returning to one split.
The Bid Was Priced on Volume You Never Sent
Midway through a packaging transition, a natural foods brand sat down with its consultants and worked through an uncomfortable agenda item.
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.