From manager-dependent to system-governed

The problem

The business had a capable team and steady demand, but everything ran through one person. The production manager translated every order into production sheets, decided what to build next, chased materials and solved breakdowns: more than 40 hours a week of hands-on coordination.

Output averaged about 12 doors a day. On paper, the bottleneck stations could handle 40. The gap wasn’t effort. It was everything around the work.

What we found

We spent three days on the floor timing every step of door production.

• Two bottlenecks set the pace: gluing and assembly at 11.4 minutes a door, and CNC trimming at 9.6 minutes.
• 44% of assembly time was applying and spreading glue.
• 43% of the CNC cycle wasn’t cutting. It was loading, unloading and changing tools, so a faster machine wouldn’t have fixed it.
• Stoppages, not slow workers: glue filler running out, steel frames not ready, tools failing, CNC faults, blunt tooling causing blowouts, and no clear daily targets.

Reconciling the time showed that on one day, 19 doors at 17.1 minutes each used 325 of 440 available minutes. 115 minutes a day were unaccounted for. How to run this check yourself.

What we changed on the front line

• Rebalanced the line into single-piece flow, with staged plans for 3, 4, 5 and 9 operators.
• Designed a new factory layout around the flow: frame cutting, stapling, steel frame install, press, CNC and sanding in sequence.
• Set up material handling so one operator can load and unload the CNC.
• Set daily production targets by time block, and introduced 5S.

What we built behind the scenes

• Order generators that turn sales orders into production sheets, dimensions and CNC files automatically.
• Systemised material replenishment with stock takes, an order quantity tool and lead-time buffers.
• Live dashboards for output, defects and rework, with an escalation matrix so the team knows how to respond.
• Preventive maintenance and tool-life tracking inside the production system.
• New roles: daily scheduling moved to a production coordinator, guided by the dashboards.

The handover

When the production manager moved on, the factory didn’t fall over. We ran a 12-week transition:

1. Weeks 1–4, hypercare. The production coordinator took over daily sequencing using live trackers, with close oversight.
2. Weeks 5–8, ownership. The coordinator ran the line independently. The operations director checked the dashboard twice a day, and an 8 am floor huddle became routine.
3. Weeks 9–12, build and grow. Sales and production alignment meetings started, operators began their own improvement loops, and an audit confirmed the line was running on the system.

The result

• Manager time on the floor fell from 40+ hours to under 4 hours a week.
• Order preparation admin fell by 95%.
• Output now scales with the roster. Adding a person means reassigning workstations to a pre-planned line balance: targets of 23, 34 and 40 doors a day for 3, 4 and 5 operators, up from about 12.
• There is a costed path to 88 doors a day with a second assembly station and more CNC capacity.
• Knowledge that lived in one person’s head is now built into the tools.