How to Quickly Turn Around an Underperforming Manufacturing Plant

Even well-run companies occasionally have a manufacturing plant that jumps off the rails.

A manufacturing plant occasionally becomes a case study for Murphy’s law. Anything that can go wrong, does go wrong. As a result, it ends up missing the monthly production and financial targets by a wide margin. With each passing month, the plant falls further and further behind.

This TBM article describes the four-phase plant turnaround process that we’ve developed over the years that can quickly get a manufacturing operation’s performance back to where it should be.

TBM Four-Phase Plant Crisis Recovery Process

The process has four objectives: identify the causes of the failures, stabilize the situation, implement lasting countermeasures, and establish the work practices and management behaviors that sustain new performance levels.

1. Phase 1: Evaluation (about 10% of the time).

   Review current financial and operational metrics, run an on-site diagnostic, and identify the primary loss drivers. The team agrees on KPIs such as operating equipment efficiency, labor cost per hour and output per hour, then builds a new recovery plan.

2. Phase 2: Stabilization (about 25%). Stop the bleeding.

   Execute the highest-impact actions first, support critical customers, evaluate current staff, and introduce a daily management system and standard work.

3. Phase 3: Recovery & Improvement (about 50%).

   Address root causes across asset performance (OEE), staffing, supply chain and scheduling, and quality and scrap control. Leaders review progress against agreed KPIs at least weekly.

4. Phase 4: Sustainment (about 15%).

   Document new process and leader standard work, develop process leaders, and solidify audit and governance processes that give early warning of performance slippage.

How long does a plant turnaround take?

When the primary issues are process- and management-related, the four-phase process can deliver meaningful results within three to four months in some circumstances. Recovery takes longer when root causes sit outside the plant’s normal span of control, such as equipment that needs complete refurbishment or key leadership positions that must be filled. A fast turnaround typically requires an experienced crisis team of five to ten people.

Case study: Plant crisis recovery in a high-volume plastics plant

A high-volume consumer product operation faced a $300,000 monthly earnings variance to plan, driven by pounds produced per day, material usage and labor costs. A nine-person TBM recovery team worked three months, seven days a week, through all four phases.

Download the full briefing to get the activities in each of the four phases, the turnaround activities and outcomes by area of focus and guidance on building the right recovery team.