Orders are waiting. The plant isn't shipping enough.
More output from the plant you have. Before you buy capacity.
The backlog grew again this month. Overtime is up, expedites are up, and the answer to “why” changes with whoever you ask.
Signs it is already happening.
- The constraint moves every week: planning, then starts, then material, then one process step
- Expedite and overtime are now permanent lines in the budget
- You have been quoted a new line, and nobody has shown you the plant is full
Where the output goes.
A medical-device manufacturer planning fivefold growth asked whether its operation could carry it. Of every 100 paid hours on the floor:
- Producing sellable units
- 56
- Waiting, moving, searching, rework, meetings on the floor
- 44
Assessment, medical devices, 2026. You are pricing a new line as if every paid hour made product. Here, 56 of every 100 did. Recovered hours alone do not carry fivefold growth; the roadmap set which hours to recover first, and when new capacity was due.
Three reasons the plant can't ship.
01 · Starts don't match capacity
Work orders are released to keep people busy, not to keep the constraint fed.
Fix Firm rules for opening and releasing work, reviewed daily.
02 · Nobody owns the constraint
It is found in a meeting, argued about, and found somewhere else next week.
Fix One daily meeting on output, late orders and today's constraint, with output reported by shift.
03 · The gain doesn't hold
A good month, then the old habits.
Fix A shift handover that carries priorities, weekly reviews, and a named owner and due date for every action. When the constraint moves, the same routine finds it.
Release rules and daily routines are yours to change tomorrow. Changeovers and process steps on a validated line go through your change control, so those are designed with your engineers and QA, not handed to them.
How we move on it.
First week
On the floor
A person who has run plants finds the constraint, usually in the first week.
First month
Flow and starts
Release rules, changeovers and the daily routine, built with the line teams.
First quarter
Hold the gain
Shift handover, weekly reviews, escalation by exception.
Questions we hear about this.
- Why not a large firm's operations practice?
- Because the person on your floor in week one is the person who finishes the work, and has run plants under change control. That person finds the constraint, usually in the first week; release rules, changeovers and the daily routine are built with your line teams, and the shift handover and weekly reviews hold the gain.
- Do we need a new line?
- Not until the one you have is full. In the plants we assess, the paid hours that produce sellable units are usually far fewer than the paid hours on the floor: 56 in 100 at one medical-device manufacturer. The diagnostic tells you yours.
Tell us what the plant is missing.
Describe the orders that are waiting and what you have already tried. In 15 minutes we'll say whether we have seen the pattern before, what we would want to look at first, and whether a week on the floor is the right next step.
Nothing to prepare. If sharing material would help after the call, we sign an NDA first.
The senior person who would do the work gives you a straight answer. Our people →