Facing double-digit volume growth in its most labor-intensive department, a 15-day delivery promise it could not reliably meet, and on-time-in-full performance stuck in the low 70s, this global flavor and food ingredients manufacturer needed to turn a reactive, firefighting operation into one managed by data and daily routine.
A global flavor ingredients manufacturer lifted compounding productivity 13%, drove router accuracy from 26% to 89%, a 242% increase, and delivered $795K in savings.
Global Flavor and Food Ingredients Manufacturer
Results at a Glance
13%
Increase in Pounds per Labor Hour
242%
Router Accuracy Gain, 26% to 89%
$795K
Verified Savings
Executive Brief
This global flavor and food ingredients manufacturer faced double-digit volume growth in its most labor-intensive department, a 15-day delivery promise it could not reliably meet, and on-time-in-full performance stuck in the low 70s. Its ERP planned to infinite capacity, productivity had never been measured, routing standards were 10 to 15 years old, and only 26% of routing steps were scanned closed. POWERS installed a Structured Management System across production and the quality lab, created the plant’s first productivity metric, pounds per labor hour, replaced a daily order list with finite scheduling and a Resource Load & Capacity Model, built pre-weigh and kit-in-full processes, and put the lab on a Next 24 Hours schedule. Through 23 weeks, compounding productivity rose 13%, router accuracy climbed from 26% to 89%, pre-weighed orders ran 34% more pounds per hour, and verified savings reached $795K.
The Situation
Every order received the same 15-day promise, every order was priority one, and nobody could say what the plant could actually produce.
Facing double-digit volume growth in its most labor-intensive department, a 15-day delivery promise it could not reliably meet, and on-time-in-full performance stuck in the low 70s, this global flavor and food ingredients manufacturer needed to turn a reactive, firefighting operation into one managed by data and daily routine.
The plant’s ERP planned to infinite capacity. Every order received the same 15-day promise regardless of load, and the “finite schedule” was a multi-page order list exported each morning that no one could total by shift or department.
Productivity had never been measured. Routing standards were 10 to 15 years old, only 26% of routing steps were being scanned closed, and leadership evaluated production on schedule attainment against a schedule it had sized itself.
Capacity-driven misses were coded as scheduler errors, expedites bypassed the front door, and the quality lab ran first-in-first-out with no schedule or huddle. Every order was “priority one,” and nobody could say what the plant could actually produce.
The Diagnosis
Six structural gaps producing the same outcome from six directions.
Infinite-capacity planning and a blanket promise date
Ship dates were auto-assigned at order entry with no capacity check, and orders were not finite-scheduled until day 10 to 12 of the 15-day window, so overloads surfaced as misses rather than planning decisions. Median cycle time was 31 days; only 12% of orders shipped inside the promise.
No productivity measure, no reliable standards
Pounds per labor hour did not exist as a metric. Router standards had not been updated in over a decade, and a 26% scan-closure rate meant router hours, finite schedules, and cost accounting were built on fiction.
Capacity invisible across the organization
Forecasts showed pounds, orders, and revenue but never man-hours or machine hours. A 1.5-million-pound mix shift into the department with one-third the throughput per labor hour added roughly 7,500 man-hours no capacity plan anticipated.
Material flow pulled operators off the line
Compounders left their stations to find, debulk, and weigh their own materials. Incomplete kits stalled batch starts, returns piled up on the floor, and aging inventory sat in temporary locations for months.
Quality lab without a management system
No daily huddle, no work assignments, no lost-time tracking, and no escalation standard. Labor capacity went underutilized even when staffing was sufficient, driving backlog, carryover, and late product release.
Multiple versions of the truth
Reporting lived in disconnected spreadsheets. Expedite data tracked counts, not effort, and more than half of expedites had inventory available, a system gap rather than a supply shortage. The site assessed at Level 1 on all five dimensions of the POWERS SIOP Maturity Model.
What POWERS Did
Turned a reactive, firefighting operation into one managed by data and daily routine.
POWERS installed a Structured Management System across production and the quality lab: daily direction-setting meetings, tiered huddles, short-interval control tours, Gemba walks, leader standard work, and a weekly coaching cadence tying each compounder’s output to the department goal.
With operations leadership, POWERS created the plant’s first productivity metric, pounds per labor hour, set targets by line and department, and enforced scan-closure discipline so router hours reflected reality. With planning and scheduling, the team replaced the order list with a finite-schedule dashboard by day and shift, a week-over-week capacity and backlog forecast, and a Resource Load & Capacity Model that converts demand into machine hours, man-hours, and operators required by month.
With warehouse and production teams, POWERS built pre-weigh, kit-in-full, and debulk processes with a validated handoff, a standardized returns lane, inventory-adjustment thresholds, and daily review of aging temporary-location inventory. With IT, the team turned a static ERP order report into a real-time end-to-end execution dashboard with shared notes, and built expedite, savings, and lab dashboards so leadership sees workload, risk, and cost in one view.
In quality, POWERS installed a Next 24 Hours lab schedule, a Stop-Contain-Notify-Document escalation standard, QA/QC standard work, weekly defect Pareto reviews, and a leadership playbook to sustain the routines after the engagement ends.
The Full Result
Six measurable gains across production, planning, the warehouse, and the quality lab, with $795K in verified savings through 23 weeks.
13%
Increase in Pounds per Labor Hour
Creating a pounds-per-labor-hour metric, setting line-level targets, and coaching to the number raised department productivity from 141 to 160 lbs per labor hour on total hours, delivering 16% more pounds on only 2% more hours and exceeding baseline in 21 of 23 weeks.
242%
Router Accuracy Gain, 26% to 89%
Enforcing scan closure on every routing step and addressing the root causes of step-skipping lifted router accuracy from 26% to 89%, the unlock for accurate standard times, finite scheduling, and reliable cost accounting.
$795K
Verified Savings
Through 23 weeks, verified savings against the prior-year baseline reached $795K, led by $600K in cost of poor quality (rejections and rework) and $374K in regular labor, tracking ahead of projection since Week 16.
34%
More Pounds per Hour on Pre-Weighed Orders
Pre-weighed orders run 34% more pounds per hour than non-pre-weighed, time to compound fell 25%, and kitting attainment reached 91% with kits staged two or more days ahead, without adding headcount or capital.
69%
Reduction in Aging Temporary Inventory
Daily review of aging inventory in temporary locations, a standardized returns lane, and adjustment thresholds cut aging temporary-location inventory 69% in the first week and cleared material that had sat since January.
59%
Increase in Lab Schedule Attainment
A Next 24 Hours lab schedule, start-of-shift huddles, and an escalation standard raised lab schedule attainment from 34% to between 50% and 56% (90% including micro), with standard work at 100% compliance on all shifts.
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Stronger Execution. Stronger Performance.
A global flavor ingredients manufacturer lifted compounding productivity 13%, drove router accuracy from 26% to 89%, a 242% increase, and delivered $795K in savings.
Global Flavor and Food Ingredients Manufacturer
Executive Brief
This global flavor and food ingredients manufacturer faced double-digit volume growth in its most labor-intensive department, a 15-day delivery promise it could not reliably meet, and on-time-in-full performance stuck in the low 70s. Its ERP planned to infinite capacity, productivity had never been measured, routing standards were 10 to 15 years old, and only 26% of routing steps were scanned closed. POWERS installed a Structured Management System across production and the quality lab, created the plant’s first productivity metric, pounds per labor hour, replaced a daily order list with finite scheduling and a Resource Load & Capacity Model, built pre-weigh and kit-in-full processes, and put the lab on a Next 24 Hours schedule. Through 23 weeks, compounding productivity rose 13%, router accuracy climbed from 26% to 89%, pre-weighed orders ran 34% more pounds per hour, and verified savings reached $795K.
Results at a Glance
13%
Increase in Pounds per Labor Hour
242%
Router Accuracy Gain, 26% to 89%
$795K
Verified Savings
The Situation
Every order received the same 15-day promise, every order was priority one, and nobody could say what the plant could actually produce.
The plant’s ERP planned to infinite capacity. Every order received the same 15-day promise regardless of load, and the “finite schedule” was a multi-page order list exported each morning that no one could total by shift or department.
Productivity had never been measured. Routing standards were 10 to 15 years old, only 26% of routing steps were being scanned closed, and leadership evaluated production on schedule attainment against a schedule it had sized itself.
Capacity-driven misses were coded as scheduler errors, expedites bypassed the front door, and the quality lab ran first-in-first-out with no schedule or huddle. Every order was “priority one,” and nobody could say what the plant could actually produce.
The Diagnosis
Six structural gaps producing the same outcome from six directions.
Infinite-capacity planning and a blanket promise date
Ship dates were auto-assigned at order entry with no capacity check, and orders were not finite-scheduled until day 10 to 12 of the 15-day window, so overloads surfaced as misses rather than planning decisions. Median cycle time was 31 days; only 12% of orders shipped inside the promise.
No productivity measure, no reliable standards
Pounds per labor hour did not exist as a metric. Router standards had not been updated in over a decade, and a 26% scan-closure rate meant router hours, finite schedules, and cost accounting were built on fiction.
Capacity invisible across the organization
Forecasts showed pounds, orders, and revenue but never man-hours or machine hours. A 1.5-million-pound mix shift into the department with one-third the throughput per labor hour added roughly 7,500 man-hours no capacity plan anticipated.
Material flow pulled operators off the line
Compounders left their stations to find, debulk, and weigh their own materials. Incomplete kits stalled batch starts, returns piled up on the floor, and aging inventory sat in temporary locations for months.
Quality lab without a management system
No daily huddle, no work assignments, no lost-time tracking, and no escalation standard. Labor capacity went underutilized even when staffing was sufficient, driving backlog, carryover, and late product release.
Multiple versions of the truth
Reporting lived in disconnected spreadsheets. Expedite data tracked counts, not effort, and more than half of expedites had inventory available, a system gap rather than a supply shortage. The site assessed at Level 1 on all five dimensions of the POWERS SIOP Maturity Model.
What POWERS Did
Turned a reactive, firefighting operation into one managed by data and daily routine.
POWERS installed a Structured Management System across production and the quality lab: daily direction-setting meetings, tiered huddles, short-interval control tours, Gemba walks, leader standard work, and a weekly coaching cadence tying each compounder’s output to the department goal.
With operations leadership, POWERS created the plant’s first productivity metric, pounds per labor hour, set targets by line and department, and enforced scan-closure discipline so router hours reflected reality. With planning and scheduling, the team replaced the order list with a finite-schedule dashboard by day and shift, a week-over-week capacity and backlog forecast, and a Resource Load & Capacity Model that converts demand into machine hours, man-hours, and operators required by month.
With warehouse and production teams, POWERS built pre-weigh, kit-in-full, and debulk processes with a validated handoff, a standardized returns lane, inventory-adjustment thresholds, and daily review of aging temporary-location inventory. With IT, the team turned a static ERP order report into a real-time end-to-end execution dashboard with shared notes, and built expedite, savings, and lab dashboards so leadership sees workload, risk, and cost in one view.
In quality, POWERS installed a Next 24 Hours lab schedule, a Stop-Contain-Notify-Document escalation standard, QA/QC standard work, weekly defect Pareto reviews, and a leadership playbook to sustain the routines after the engagement ends.
The Full Result
13%
Increase in Pounds per Labor Hour
Creating a pounds-per-labor-hour metric, setting line-level targets, and coaching to the number raised department productivity from 141 to 160 lbs per labor hour on total hours, delivering 16% more pounds on only 2% more hours and exceeding baseline in 21 of 23 weeks.
242%
Router Accuracy Gain, 26% to 89%
Enforcing scan closure on every routing step and addressing the root causes of step-skipping lifted router accuracy from 26% to 89%, the unlock for accurate standard times, finite scheduling, and reliable cost accounting.
$795K
Verified Savings
Through 23 weeks, verified savings against the prior-year baseline reached $795K, led by $600K in cost of poor quality (rejections and rework) and $374K in regular labor, tracking ahead of projection since Week 16.
34%
More Pounds per Hour on Pre-Weighed Orders
Pre-weighed orders run 34% more pounds per hour than non-pre-weighed, time to compound fell 25%, and kitting attainment reached 91% with kits staged two or more days ahead, without adding headcount or capital.
69%
Reduction in Aging Temporary Inventory
Daily review of aging inventory in temporary locations, a standardized returns lane, and adjustment thresholds cut aging temporary-location inventory 69% in the first week and cleared material that had sat since January.
59%
Increase in Lab Schedule Attainment
A Next 24 Hours lab schedule, start-of-shift huddles, and an escalation standard raised lab schedule attainment from 34% to between 50% and 56% (90% including micro), with standard work at 100% compliance on all shifts.
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