This is a sample report for a fictional shop.

The shop, the people and every number below are made up, to show what you receive after an Operational Workflow Review. Your report is built from what we see on your own floor.

Sample · Operational Workflow Review

Demo Precision Works: where the floor loses stability

Shop
14 CNC machines, 2 shifts
Work
Turned and milled parts, high mix
Review
3 days on site
Written for
The owner

1. In short

  • Jobs wait far more than they run. A typical job is in the shop for 9 days and is machined for less than 2.
  • Problems don’t have owners. More than half the problems we logged had nobody acting on them after 2 hours.
  • The plan follows phone calls. Priority changes are made without seeing which jobs they make late.
  • None of this is a people problem. The team works hard; the way work moves between them has no rules, so effort goes into chasing.

2. Starting numbers

Recorded during the review. We measure the same things again after the system is running, so you can see what changed.

Open jobs on the floor

Counted on day 1, every machine and queue

46

Jobs late against the promised date

Last month’s dispatch register

31%

Time from a problem reported to someone acting

We timed 11 problems: 40 minutes to 5 hours

Not recorded

Priority changes in one day

Day 2, from the supervisor’s whiteboard and calls

7

Owner’s calls a day asking where a job is

Owner’s own estimate, checked on day 3

About 25

3. How work really flows

Followed for 12 real jobs. Red marks show where jobs waited longest, on average.

  1. Order received
  2. Planning (whiteboard) waits 1 day
  3. Material
  4. Turning waits 0.5 day
  5. VMC waits 2.5 days
  6. Deburr
  7. QC waits 1 day
  8. Dispatch

4. What we found

Each problem with what we saw, the evidence, and what it costs the shop.

Problem 1 · Reactive production

Breakdowns and quality problems have no owner

What we saw
Problems are reported by phone to the supervisor, who is also running the floor. Nothing is written down, so a problem raised on the night shift is often unknown on the day shift.
Evidence
Of 11 problems we logged over 3 days, 6 had nobody working on them 2 hours after they were reported. 2 were reported twice by different operators.
What it costs
About 38 machine-hours stood idle in 3 days waiting for someone to act.

Problem 2 · Pressure-driven decisions

Priorities change with every phone call

What we saw
Any customer call can make a job "urgent". The change is made on the whiteboard, but nobody checks which other jobs it pushes back.
Evidence
7 priority changes on day 2; 5 came from customer calls. 4 of them stopped a job mid-set-up on the VMC.
What it costs
About 6 hours of extra set-ups a day, and 3 jobs that were on time became late.

Problem 3 · Workflow discipline

Jobs wait between machines until someone notices

What we saw
Finished parts sit next to the VMC until a helper is free to move them. QC finds out a job is ready only when the parts arrive.
Evidence
Jobs spent 2.5 days on average waiting after VMC, against less than 1 day of machining.
What it costs
Most of a job’s 9 days in the shop is waiting, not cutting, and it ties up cash in WIP.

Problem 4 · Execution clarity

Shift handover lives in people’s heads

What we saw
Handover is a short talk at the gate. The night shift starts from the whiteboard, which is not updated after 6 pm.
Evidence
On 2 of 3 nights, the night shift ran a job that had been put on hold during the day.
What it costs
1 batch of 40 parts machined to an old drawing revision.

5. What your workflow system must do

The rules come first. These are the jobs the system has to do on this floor, for each person who uses it.

Operators and supervisor

Report a problem from a phone in under a minute. Each problem gets a named owner and a response deadline, and is flagged when the deadline passes.

Owner

One screen with what needs attention right now: problems with no owner, overdue problems, critical ones.

Planner

A rush job needs a reason, an approval and a promised date, and shows which jobs it pushes back.

Every shift

Each job carries a written status, an expected finish and the next step, so handover does not depend on memory.

Owner, monthly

The starting numbers above, measured the same way, to see whether the shop is getting more stable.

Screens like these are shown on our homepage, in “What changes on your floor”, built for a sample shop.

6. Next steps

  1. Proposal: what we build, in what order, the timeline and the price, in writing.
  2. Build: the most costly problem first (here, problems without an owner), so the floor sees a change early.
  3. Coaching: on the floor with the supervisor and operators until the new way is a habit.
  4. Review fee: credited in full to the build if the shop goes ahead.

Want this for your own shop?

It starts with a free 90-minute walk on your floor. At the end you get 3 places where your workflow is losing stability.

Book a free floor walk
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