All case studies
Aerospace & Defense Manufacturing
A 3-Site Turnaround Worth $26.75M and a 423% Return
Three aerostructures sites were operating as three separate businesses — no shared schedule, no shared reporting, no shared way to see whether the plant was winning or losing on any given day.
Client: Aerospace & Defense Manufacturer · name withheld
$26.75M
Projected annualized benefit across 3 sites
423%
Return on investment
-70%
Meeting startup time reduction
-67.5%
Excess & obsolete inventory
Situation
- Three sites ran disconnected operations with no shared scheduling framework, so problems at one site stayed invisible to the others.
- Touch labor overtime was running at 30% of hours, with contract labor usage elevated at one site.
- Meeting culture was unstructured — daily startup meetings routinely ran 23 minutes with no clear path to resolution.
- A growing MRB tag backlog and excess/obsolete inventory were tying up working capital across sites.
Approach
- Installed master schedule and demand planning processes simultaneously across all three sites.
- Built a unified floor-management system, empowering supervisors to resolve issues in real time instead of escalating.
- Stood up a dedicated War Room focused specifically on quality and schedule priorities at the highest-risk site.
- Ran a phased MRB tag reduction program alongside a targeted excess-and-obsolete inventory initiative.
- Standardized daily and weekly operating reports and retrained meeting effectiveness across every site.
Results
- $26.75M in projected annualized benefit identified and quantified across all three sites — a 423% ROI.
- Touch labor overtime cut from 30% to 17%, with an 8–12% target range in sight.
- Contract labor usage reduced 75% at the highest-cost site.
- $2M in overtime benefit on pace across all three sites combined.
- MRB tag response time cut 53% in Phase I.
- Excess and obsolete inventory reduced 67.5%, alongside a $5.2M reduction in pre-emptive inventory purchases.
- Meeting startup time cut from 23 minutes to 7 minutes — a 70% reduction.
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