Case study · Food manufacturing
Northfield Foods: three weeks out of a 40-day order cycle
A family-owned manufacturer growing faster than its planning could keep up.
The challenge
Busy everywhere, late anyway
Northfield's plant ran at 94% utilisation and still missed a third of its delivery dates. Every department was busy; orders spent most of their life waiting between them.
The leadership team suspected the ovens. The data said otherwise.
The leadership team suspected the ovens. The data said otherwise.
Six months later
Order cycle
From 40 days to 19.
On-time delivery
Up from 66%.
Inventory released
Without a single stock-out.
What we did
Fix the waiting, not the working
We mapped a single order from phone call to truck and found it touched eleven desks. Nine of those handoffs existed because of a planning report produced once a week.
With the planning team, we moved to a daily rhythm, cut the release of new orders to match real oven capacity, and gave the floor one visual board instead of four spreadsheets.
None of it needed new software. It needed a few people to agree on one number and meet for fifteen minutes every morning. The plant manager now runs that meeting; we have not been back since March, except for lunch.
With the planning team, we moved to a daily rhythm, cut the release of new orders to match real oven capacity, and gave the floor one visual board instead of four spreadsheets.
None of it needed new software. It needed a few people to agree on one number and meet for fifteen minutes every morning. The plant manager now runs that meeting; we have not been back since March, except for lunch.
They found three weeks of waiting in a process we thought was lean.
Seeing yourself in this?
Book the two-week diagnostic and find out where your order cycle goes.