r/LeanManufacturing

I work in a manufacturing environment with order-based production, and I’m really interested in learning how different companies manage production planning challenges in real life.

Especially when:

Forecasts are inaccurate

Customers change priorities frequently

Capacity is limited

On-time delivery (OTD) is a key KPI

I’d love to know:

How do you build your production plan?

Do you rely more on forecast or actual orders?

How do you manage scheduling and prioritization?

How do you study capacity and bottlenecks before launching a project/product?

What tools or methods helped improve OTD in your factory?

How do planners coordinate with procurement, warehouse, and production teams?

Also curious about whether you use Excel, ERP systems, APS tools, or custom methods.

Would really appreciate hearing real experiences, lessons learned, or even mistakes that taught you something valuable.

I've been digging deep into how manufacturing ops run, and honestly, what I found is pretty wild.

Even with all their fancy ERP systems, it’s like daily operations still come down to:

* A bunch of Excel sheets flying around

* Endless WhatsApp chats trying to sync up

* Emails, emails, and more emails just to get simple things done

* And people running around, chasing down manual status updates

This isn't just for fringe stuff, either. It’s for core activities like:

* Tracking installation progress to the minute

* Pinpointing and fixing issues *fast*

* Coordinating shifts so everyone’s on the same page, no excuses

* And getting real-time operational reports, not yesterday’s news

So what happens? We end up with:

* The same message being sent five different ways, wasting everyone’s time

* Delays in seeing what’s actually happening, which kills agility

* And critical problems staying hidden until they blow up in our faces

Seeing this over and over, we finally said enough was enough. We rolled up our sleeves and started building out a lean, lightning-fast operations workflow platform in-house. It’s been a game-changer.

Now, I’m genuinely curious: given everything going on in *your* world, what’s that one operational process that still makes you grit your teeth, feeling like it’s stuck in the dark ages?

Guys my management just pushed to me the new hot potato of the fiscal year: I'm a production engineer from machining but there is this "add-on" painting station that they are lauching now. The volume It's like 15 to 20% of what I produced on the milling machines. Process layout implemented as different materials have different base coats: gets dipped for base coat and then spray painted on top.

The thing is: they have like 5 different materials (so 5 different dip stations) and 80 different colors available in catallogue and alsohave this special feature in which we can paint according to client sample color. Exactly: they receive a sample of whatever color the client has and we need to figure out the paint aind spray paint it.

The obvious happens: opperators pick up simple parts first, leave the shitty ones that have a sample to latter and that fucks up OTD. Also the Production batches with lower number of parts get picked first too.

which tools would you use to figure out this mess?

I'm thinking of checking the process times per process they do. Check the distribution of parts they get that would fit each process. And with that have an estimation of capacity per product.

But that won't fix discipline problems. DO you have experience implementing FEFO solutions?

I’ve been trying to learn more about manufacturing recently, and one thing I keep noticing is how different real factory operations seem compared to theory or classroom discussions.

On paper everything looks optimized and structured, but people working in manufacturing often talk about:

1. supplier delays

2. machine downtime

3. communication gaps

4. production bottlenecks

5. quality control surprises

6. unrealistic timelines

7. inventory chaos

8. operators finding problems engineers missed

So I’m curious What’s one lesson about manufacturing you only understood after working in the real world?

(Interested in hearing the brutally practical stuff that newcomers usually don’t realize until much later)

We can all acknowledge the benefits of implementing quick wins in the course of a CI project. But what are some ground rules you put into place for helping the team define a "Quick Win" a LSS project? Here is some we use:

- 48-hour litmus test: Solution is implemented and results seen within 48 hours
- Must follow "if - then": If (insert quick win solution) then (insert primary metric) will improved
- Not based in opinions or "I think..." but data

What are your thoughts and best practices?

I need to purchase steel components for a conveyor belt system that will carry freshly molded rubber products during the cooling stage of the production. I am confused if I need a specific kind of stainless steel pipes for construction of the belt? Do they need to be 316 grade or is 304 good enough?

The cooling stage it one of the most important parts of the production process and I was just wondering currently sourcing steel components for a conveyor belt system that will carry freshly molded rubber products during the cooling stage of production. The rubber comes off the molding process fairly warm, so I need something durable that can handle continuous use, moderate heat exposure, and constant contact with rubber without warping or corroding too quickly. And most importantly won't corrode, I am looking to source the pipes locally or from alibaba and or amazon and will need to know the specific grade before I order.

I’ve been working at a new factory for about a month now. I’m basically the first person trying to start a lean transformation there — the company has never done anything like this before.

After giving me a general overview of the processes, management specifically asked me to speed up the second-to-last stage of production. The thing is, they directed me toward a specific area before I even had the chance to properly identify the real bottleneck. I didn’t want to come across as difficult since this is also the company’s first experience with lean transformation. My idea was to improve the obvious wastes in this area first, gain their trust with measurable efficiency improvements, and then later work on a broader system-wide optimization.

However, once I got into the process, I realized there are constant stoppages caused by defects and mistakes coming from previous stages. When I tried to investigate the upstream quality control process, the response I got was basically: “There will always be mistakes in these jobs, just speed up the area we told you to focus on.”

To explain the process a little more: operators scan packaged products and place them into barcode-labeled boxes. The system tracks which products are inside which box. After scanning, the operator also has to physically organize the products neatly into the carton.

I did a very simple time-study-based improvement: I assigned one helper for every three operators. The helpers handle material fetching and box arrangement, while the operators stay focused only on scanning. After implementing this, production output increased from around 60–70k units per day when I first arrived to roughly 90–110k now.

Despite this improvement, management still says it’s not enough and keeps pushing me to speed up this area even more. But the defective or problematic products arriving from previous stages genuinely slow the process down.

So what would you do in this situation?

Another issue is that management doesn’t like the helpers I added. Their argument is basically: “If adding people solves the problem, we could have done that ourselves.”

And one more thing: if I stop constantly walking around the floor and monitoring people all day, production numbers suddenly drop. Am I supposed to stay on top of everyone all the time for this to work?

I just went to put a wrench back in the maintenance tool box. I assist with maintenance after our mechanic leaves for the day. The tool box was broken (one of the air springs that lifts the lid had backed out of its rod end). The tool to fix it is in the box. It took maybe 90 seconds tops to fix. I want to stress this is the maintenance tool box, the tool box specifically for the maintenance mechanic to do maintenance, the tool box for the person whose sole job is to keep thinks from being broken, which was broken.

I’m not even sure how exactly to articulate the problem, but just every lean part of me is screaming internally and I don’t see how you get a culture like this to the place where it needs to be.

Thoughts?

Something I see in a lot of shops is that quoting accuracy isn’t destroyed by the math — it’s destroyed by hidden time sinks. Setup creep, cycle time drift, tribal knowledge, and untracked micro‑delays add up fast. Most shops don’t realize how much margin they lose to these until they map it.

Hello all,

I’ve been working in manufacturing as a Lean Manager for awhile now but I’m looking to switch to construction….is this industry more stable? Demanding? What does the lean role look like?

Thanks!!