Case Study · Manufacturing
Plant turnaround at a regional food processor
A profitable brand losing money on its own line. We stabilised output in one quarter and gave the plant an honest performance baseline for the first time.
Sector
Food & beverage processing
Region
East Africa, single site
Duration
Two-week diagnostic, 16-week delivery
Practice
Operational Excellence · Manufacturing
The challenge
Strong demand, unreliable supply from its own factory
The commercial team was turning away orders while the plant ran overtime. Nobody could say where the hours were going: the reported OEE looked acceptable, but month-end volumes never matched it.
- Unplanned stoppages absorbed as 'normal' by shift teams
- Changeovers taking twice the standard, with no standard written down
- Maintenance almost entirely reactive; spares held informally
- Quality rejects reworked quietly rather than reported
The engagement
Diagnose → Design → Deliver
How the work unfolded, phase by phase.
Diagnose
Two weeks on the floor
Shift observation, time studies and loss capture on every line, cross-checked against production and finance records to build an honest baseline.
Design
Attack the three biggest losses
Standard changeover procedures, a planned maintenance schedule with a critical spares list, and a daily performance review at shift handover.
Deliver
Piloted on one line, then scaled
We ran the new routines with supervisors on the worst-performing line, proved the gain, then rolled it out with the supervisors themselves as trainers.
Results
What moved
Stabilised
Output variance cut sharply within one quarter
Halved
Average changeover time on the pilot line
Planned
Maintenance schedule replacing reactive callouts
Daily
Loss review owned by shift supervisors
“For the first time we know what the plant can actually do — and we're planning against that number instead of hoping.”
After handover
The plant kept improving without us
We exited on the date agreed. The daily review continued because supervisors owned it and could see it working — and the maintenance planner role we helped define was filled internally.
- Standard work documents written by the operators who use them
- Supervisors trained to run their own loss analysis
- A performance baseline finance and operations both trust
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