POWERS Playbook: Costs Don’t Cut Themselves, You Have to Root Them Out

Lowering costs isn’t just a finance department job. It’s something every supervisor, manager, and frontline leader can tackle, every single day.

Costs have a way of hiding in plain sight. When nobody’s watching, small issues start to pile up—overtime approvals here, rushed freight shipments there, repairs that only happen when a machine finally quits. Over time, these hidden costs eat away at your margins and tie up time and resources you could use for improvements, training, or growth.

This is the first post in our series this month focused on Lowering Costs. Each playbook will give you practical, no-nonsense ways to spot waste and keep expenses under control. We’re starting here because the mindset is just as important as the tactics.

You can’t fix what you don’t see. When you build the habit of looking for these hidden overruns, you can start fixing them before they get out of hand.

Where Hidden Costs Lurk on the Shop Floor

Here are a few examples you’ve probably seen before. These aren’t big, dramatic problems—they’re the small leaks that quietly drain your budget, shift after shift:

Overtime Creep
A little overtime doesn’t seem like much—until it happens shift after shift. Those extra hours often come from avoidable delays, last-minute changes, or poor planning. What looks like just “helping get the job done” can turn into a major cost driver over a month.
Expedited Freight
When production runs late, shipping has to speed up to catch up. Overnight or same-day freight costs far more than planned transportation. Rushed shipments are often the symptom of bigger scheduling or coordination gaps.
Idle Time Between Steps
Operators and machines sitting idle while waiting for materials, instructions, or approvals. This downtime doesn’t always get tracked or reported, but it still costs money and reduces your overall capacity.
Excess Material Movement
Poor layout forces extra forklift trips, more handling, and more time just moving parts around instead of producing value. All those small trips eat into productive time and wear out equipment faster.
Reactive Repairs
If maintenance only happens when something fails, you’re paying top dollar in rush repairs, lost production, and wasted labor waiting around. Unplanned breakdowns can also lead to expedited parts and emergency contractor fees.
Unnecessary Rework
When quality problems aren’t caught early, you end up fixing or remaking parts—doubling the cost and tying up capacity that could be used for new orders.
Late Change Communication
Last-minute schedule or spec changes create confusion and errors. People work from old instructions, run the wrong parts, or ship incomplete orders. Fixing those mistakes often takes more time and materials than doing it right the first time.

Quick Wins to Lower Costs This Week

Here are some simple steps you can take right now to get ahead of hidden costs and start building cost-awareness into your daily routine:

Review overtime daily.
Don’t just approve it—ask why it keeps happening. Look for recurring reasons and work with your leads to plan better.
Walk the floor.
Watch for idle time, repeated material movement, and unfinished jobs waiting in queues. Just 10 minutes a day observing can reveal a lot of waste you can act on quickly.
Check the schedule.
Look ahead a couple of days for any jobs that could trigger rushed shipments if they fall behind. A little planning goes a long way.
Talk to maintenance.
Make sure preventive tasks are planned and not slipping through the cracks. Ask about machines showing early signs of trouble so you can schedule repairs before they fail.
Set clear cut-off times.
Agree on when changes to orders or schedules must be locked in to avoid last-minute chaos and expensive fixes.
Track contractor use.
Review where you’re using outside help and whether it’s really necessary. If you see the same contractors doing routine work repeatedly, look for ways to train your own team or plan ahead.

A Real Example

One supervisor noticed the forklift was running all day between a storage area and the line, sometimes making more than a dozen trips per shift. By moving the staging area just 30 feet closer to where materials were used, they eliminated over 14 unnecessary trips every day. Over the course of a year, that small change saved thousands of dollars in labor, equipment wear, and lost production time.

Keep Building the Habit

Hidden costs don’t go away on their own. They’re not always obvious, and they won’t fix themselves. You have to train yourself and your team to look for them. When everyone takes responsibility for controlling costs, small improvements stack up quickly into big results.

This is just the start. Throughout this month, we’ll share more playbooks that dig deeper into specific strategies, like:

If you’d like a simple checklist to help you spot these hidden costs or want to talk about ways to reduce waste on your floor, let’s connect.

Remember: costs don’t cut themselves. But you can. And it starts today.

Ready to Start Lowering Costs and Recovering Lost Time?

POWERS specializes in helping manufacturing teams uncover hidden costs, reduce waste, and improve productivity without adding unnecessary complexity. From overtime creep and reactive repairs to excess material movement, our proven approach equips supervisors to see where time and money slip through the cracks.

By aligning frontline leaders and daily habits with operational goals, we help you build a workplace culture where controlling costs isn’t an afterthought it’s part of how work gets done.

To make this even easier, POWERS developed DPS, our next-generation production management system. DPS combines the right set of digital tools and real-time performance data to equip your team with the right information to accelerate decision making and boost production.

Whether you’re looking to cut overtime, reduce rework, or simplify how you track daily performance, POWERS and DPS can help you get there.

Ready to lower costs and unlock your operation’s full potential?
Contact POWERS today to learn how our expertise and DPS solutions can help you maximize output, drive sustainable savings, and recover time that’s too valuable to lose.