Customer Success Stories / Realign Flow for Growth
CASE STUDY · TIER 1 AUTOMOTIVE, DRIVETRAIN COMPONENTS
Realign Flow for Growth
The best-performing plant in its network — $130M+ in annual revenue, serving several large strategic customers — still had to find contractually mandated cost savings after the easy gains were gone, while the COO wanted it ready for growth. Here’s how a shift from station-by-station thinking to workflow dynamics found both.
$600K
Direct labor savings, 12+ person shifts
$1M
Opportunity cost savings
$3M
Near-term CapEx avoided, to meet current demand
The Situation
The easy savings were already gone.
This was the best-performing plant in its network — $130M+ in annual revenue, serving several large strategic customers. The COO wanted to improve financial performance while preparing the plant for growth. But the plant manager was stuck: the annual cost savings mandated in existing customer contracts had to come from somewhere, and the low-hanging fruit was already harvested. What was left was more complex, and the risk of getting it wrong was high.
Demand was growing, but rigid automation and a lack of open capacity meant growth looked like it would need roughly $3M in new investment just to keep pace — on top of a savings target the standard continuous-improvement playbook, station by station, had already exhausted.
Before Vayoom
Best-performing plant in its network, $130M+ revenue
18% EBITDA, high indirect cost
Rigid automation, no open capacity for growth
what was in the way
Contractually mandated cost savings, with the easy gains already gone
A ~$3M CapEx ask just to grow into current demand
Complex, high-risk problems the usual playbook had already exhausted
Client Profile
$130M+ revenue, best-performing plant in network
Executive Sponsor
COO, preparing the plant for growth
Diagnostic Method
Product-workflow dynamics, not station-by-station
Prior State
Low-hanging fruit already harvested
The Diagnosis
Why the plant needed a different lens, not more effort
The plant’s continuous improvement program had already wrung out the obvious gains by looking at each station on its own — finding its bottleneck, fixing it, moving to the next. That playbook was tapped out. What was left wasn’t a bottleneck controlled flow problem anymore; it was a flow dynamics problem.
The plant team was guided to think in terms of product workflows and customer focus — the dynamics between stations — rather than the disconnected work happening at each one. That reframing surfaced answers the station-by-station approach couldn’t: buffer sizes and their locations were reevaluated, some work cells were consolidated while others were broken apart — whichever exploited the dynamics and minimized resource use — and scheduling was rebuilt around the workflow, not the individual station.
The Approach
Five steps, in this order
The capacity was already there — it was locked up in downtime, redundant maintenance cycles, and workflows that hadn’t been rationalized in years.
01
Reframe around workflows, not stations
Guided the team to think in terms of product workflows and the dynamics between stations — customer-focused flow, not station-by-station fixes.
02
Analyze uptime and buffers dynamically
Ran a dynamic analysis of machine uptime and evaluated buffer sizes and their locations to find where capacity was actually being lost.
03
Decouple and reschedule
Separated operations that didn’t need to run in lockstep, then rearranged and scheduled work for optimum resource use and financial performance.
04
Reconfigure the work-cells
Consolidated some work cells and broke others apart — whichever exploited the dynamics and minimized resource use — and converted select robots into cobots for greater throughput effectiveness.
05
Cut maintenance-driven CapEx
Rebuilt maintenance policies to reduce the new equipment the growth plan would otherwise have required, and reduced labor use through the redesigned scheduling and workflow.
“For the first time, I could walk into the COO’s office with a specific number and defend it. We’re still using the platform every week — it’s not a one-time study, it’s how we plan and run the floor now.”
— Plant Manager
The Results
What changed on the floor — and on the P&L
The reframe from station-by-station fixes to product-workflow dynamics is what found capacity the plant didn’t know it had — $600K in direct labor savings, $1M in opportunity-cost savings, and roughly $3M in near-term capital avoided just to meet current demand. For growth beyond that, the plant manager now had a specific, defensible CapEx case to bring to the COO — and kept using the platform to plan, produce, and control operations well after the initial engagement.
23%
EBITDA — a 30% improvement
$600K
Direct labor savings, 12+ person shifts
$1M
Opportunity cost savings
5 FTEs
Reduction in overtime
$3M
Near-term CapEx avoided, to meet current demand
↑
Increased production flexibility and scheduling
✓
Specific growth CapEx needs, clearly defined for the COO
→
Ongoing use of the Vayoom platform to plan and run the floor
AUTOMOTIVE · SAFETY-CRITICAL PARTS
Met Demand at Lower Cost
$2.5M in operating cost savings plus a 39% increase in net income
AUTOMOTIVE · DRIVETRAIN AXLES
Increased Flow & Flexibility
$752K in net operating cost savings, plus a 1,139% return across the project
MANUFACTURING SME · POST-BANKRUPTCY
Bankruptcy to Profitable
90 days to cash-flow positive, late shipments cut from $1M to $92K
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