The money sits between your process steps.

OEE at 74 %. Every product changeover tied up the line for around 110 minutes because setup, cleaning and first article approval ran strictly one after another. Maintenance reacted to breakdowns instead of preventing them, and the standard differed from shift to shift.

SMED workshops at line 4, together with operators, setters and quality assurance: internal and external setup separated, feeder trolleys prepared outside the downtime window. A standard for TPM with a per-shift checklist and fixed service intervals. In the release process the AOI result now decides.

OEE from 74 % to 88 % in seven months, with no investment in additional machine capacity. The line now runs smaller batches at the same output, and changeover analysis sits with the line team.

On-time delivery at 78 %. An average of 3.5 days of material sat between sub- and final assembly with nobody steering the inventory. Disruptions only surfaced in the weekly meeting, so countermeasures arrived late.

Value stream mapping across all four lines, then a supermarket with Kanban between sub- and final assembly. Alongside it an SQDCP board with a 15-minute daily routine on every shift and a two-stage escalation path. The line team set the inventory limits itself.

After five months the shift leads steered inventory themselves and the penalty clause was never triggered again. The board runs today without external facilitation.

Assembly on the job shop principle: the machine stood still and everything else moved towards it. Around 40 % of process time went on searching, walking, rework and clarifications. Design, production, logistics, purchasing and project management worked in sequence.

Value stream mapping across the entire order process, from design release to final acceptance. In the value stream design assembly was converted to flow: paced stations instead of fixed build bays, material supplied per station as a pre-picked kit. A regular meeting on the value stream replaces the departmental ones.

Productivity in assembly doubled. The departments now resolve questions within the cycle instead of reworking the part. Queries run through the station and no longer through escalation.

Spaghetti diagram across one shift: roughly 9 kilometres walked per picker. Replenishment arrived irregularly, forklift traffic crossed the picking zones, and pick frequency played no part in the layout.

Layout reordered by pick frequency so the fast movers sit on the short route. Replenishment now runs as a milk run on a fixed cycle instead of forklifts on call, alongside a supermarket at the line and clear routing with floor markings.

Forklift traffic in the picking zones was eliminated entirely and picking output rose without additional headcount. The team maintains the zoning itself now.

First pass yield at the end-of-line test was 88 %. Every eighth assembly failed, went to rework and came back to the rig, which made the rig the bottleneck. The protocols were archived but never analysed.

Analysis of every EOL test protocol from twelve months, Pareto by defect code, station, shift and batch. With the team then Ishikawa and 5-why for the three largest defect patterns. Verified with Six Sigma tools: measurement system analysis on the rig, control charts on the critical parameters, poka-yoke at the sources.

A substantial share of the failures was measurement variation rather than product defects. The genuine sources were eliminated at their point of origin, and the rig is no longer a bottleneck.

Deviations sat an average of 6 days without a decision. Of the actions agreed in the regular meetings, 41 % were completed within the agreed timeframe. The boards were maintained, but decisions were still taken in the office.

Shopfloor management rebuilt across three cascade levels, from the line board up to plant management. Leadership coaching took place at the board rather than in the seminar room, alongside a standard for the daily routine and a gemba walk on a fixed cadence.

Decisions are now taken in the shift where the problem occurs. Two of the three sites went on to develop the standard further without any external support.