The inventory that shut down an automotive manufacturing line wasn’t missing. It was sitting in dark corners of a warehouse.
I was brought in to help an automotive powder-coating supplier whose on-time delivery rate had fallen to 40%.
The problems were serious enough that missing parts had shut down a production line at the automotive manufacturer.
Except some of the parts weren’t actually missing.
I physically followed the process through the facility and found both finished and unfinished inventory sitting in poorly tracked areas—including dark corners of the warehouse.
We pulled the unfinished parts to the production line, got them coated and moved them forward. We pulled the finished inventory and prepared it for shipment to the facilities waiting for it.
That exposed the next problem.
The shipping dock had virtually no organization. Even when the correct parts made it through production, shipments could still be overlooked, delayed or effectively lost before leaving the building.
One visible problem had been hiding another.
I worked through the full process—inventory control, production flow, scheduling and shipping—and corrected the breakdowns at each stage.
In less than six weeks, the client’s on-time delivery rate increased from 40% to 95.5%.
It reinforced something I’ve carried into every operations role since: when a problem keeps repeating, you can’t always solve it from reports or meetings. Sometimes you have to physically follow the work until the system shows you where it is failing.
Has anyone else uncovered a completely different problem while trying to fix the first one?