ShedTitans Technical CFO for the Shed Industry The shed-industry practice of CodeHaus

03 Production

Are your internal processes creating efficiency or chaos?

Production problems rarely announce themselves. They show up as customer complaints, cash flow trouble, and arguments between departments.

How hard is it to get these numbers?

Seven questions. For each one, pick how hard it would be to get the answer today. Then I'll email you what your answers mean and where to look first.

1. How accurately can you predict lead times?
How to find it

Pull the last 90 days of orders. For each one, compare the lead time you quoted with the day the building was ready. Count the late ones, and how late they were.

2. How many times a month do sales and production fight, and how many hours does it cost them?
How to find it

For one month, write down every argument between sales and production over lead times, custom orders or priorities. Note roughly how many hours each one took.

3. How many of your responses to seasonal swings are planned ahead instead of reacted to?
How to find it

Lay out 24 months of sales by month and mark the slow stretch. Then write down how you handled the last slow season (inventory, crew, cash) and mark each one planned ahead or made up as it happened.

4. How much of your production follows a standard process?
How to find it

Watch the shop for a week. Note every time two people build the same thing differently, skip a step, or invent a fix on the spot. Then ask which tasks are written down anywhere.

5. What share of your quality problems reach the customer?
How to find it

Sort last quarter's complaints and service calls by type. Mark the ones a check inside the shop could have caught. Compare what the fixes in the field cost with what catching them in the shop would have cost.

6. What share of the owner's time goes to work a supervisor or support staff could do?
How to find it

Track the owner's time for one full week. Mark each task strategic (only the owner can do it), managerial (a supervisor could do it) or administrative (support staff could do it). Work out the share of time on the last two, and what that time could be producing instead.

7. From sale to delivery, what share of an order's time is work instead of waiting?
How to find it

Follow ten recent orders from sale to delivery. Write down every step, handoff and wait, with dates. Compare the days someone worked on each order with the days it sat.

Or I check it for you

In the audit, I pull the production numbers out of the systems you already run, talk with whoever is closest to them, and check them against your books. Many findings come with a dollar figure, and those go to the top of the list. Some don't, and I won't make one up.

Two weeks, $3,500 flat. If by the end of the first week I can't get to the data I need, I'll tell you then and refund the fee. You walk away with the build order, whether you ever hire me again or not.

Talk to Matthias about the audit