Manufacturing
Capacity and scaling programme for a manufacturer
The constraint wasn't the machines. It was the changeover.
An export contract on the table would have roughly doubled output requirements. The board's instinct was capital expenditure: a second line, financed. Before signing anything, we measured where capacity was actually going. Most of the shortfall was changeover time and unplanned downtime, neither of which a new line would have fixed.
- Client
- Industrial manufacturer, export contracts
- Engagement
- 20-week scaling programme
- Market
- Punjab, Pakistan
- Delivered
- 2024–2025
The situation
What we walked into
- 01
An export contract requiring close to double the current output.
- 02
A capital plan for a second line, financed, with payback resting on optimistic uptime.
- 03
No reliable measure of where production hours were actually being lost.
- 04
Quality rejections handled reactively, with rework absorbing capacity nobody had counted.
The approach
What we actually did
- 01
Measure before spending
Four weeks of structured observation and machine logging to establish true overall equipment effectiveness. Changeover and unplanned downtime accounted for the large majority of lost capacity: the line itself was rarely the binding constraint.
- 02
Attack changeover first
Structured changeover reduction, preparation moved off-line, tooling standardised, and the sequence rehearsed, recovered a substantial share of the needed capacity for a fraction of the capital cost.
- 03
Make quality preventive
In-process checks moved upstream to where defects originate, with rework tracked as lost capacity rather than written off as a cost of doing business.
- 04
Instrument the floor
Our engineering team built a simple production dashboard: output, downtime reason codes, and rejection rates visible to supervisors in real time instead of reconstructed at month end.
The result
What changed
- +34%
- Effective capacity, existing line
- -58%
- Average changeover time
- Deferred
- Second-line capital expenditure
- -3.1pts
- Rejection rate
- The export contract accepted and served from the existing plant.
- A major capital commitment deferred rather than financed on optimistic assumptions.
- Downtime reasons recorded and acted on daily rather than debated quarterly.
- Quality treated as a capacity issue, which is what it had always been.
Client identities are withheld under confidentiality. These case studies are representative of the engagements we run and the results they produce; figures illustrate typical outcomes rather than a specific audited account. We're happy to discuss specifics, and arrange references, on a call.
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