# Northfield Foods case study

> How Northfield Foods cut three weeks from its order cycle.

*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.

![Northfield Foods: three weeks out of a 40-day order cycle](https://templates.clearcms.app/media/case-1.svg)

*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.

## Six months later

### Order cycle

−21 days

From 40 days to 19.

### On-time delivery

97%

Up from 66%.

### Inventory released

$4.2M

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.

### Dana Kowal

They found three weeks of waiting in a process we thought was lean.

COO, Northfield Foods

## Seeing yourself in this?

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