How foreman Marek saved the production line in 3 days
On Monday morning at a plant near Puck, the atmosphere was thick. Line number 4 had been down since six in the morning, and losses were growing by 2,450 PLN with every hour of machine idleness. Instead of writing reports, we went straight onto the floor to find the real cause of the downtime, which had been escaping the management for two weeks.
Downtime that cost 14,300 PLN a day
In mid-October 2023, we received a call from the operations director of a medium-sized plastics processing plant. The problem was specific: one of the key injection molding machines recorded unplanned downtime an average of 11 times per shift. No one knew why, because the reporting systems only showed a general sensor error, which mechanics reset in 2 minutes. However, those 2 minutes repeated multiple times, plus the time needed to restart the machine, added up to 3.2 hours of pure loss in a day.
When we arrived on site, the audit started with reviewing logs from the last 24 days. Numbers don't lie – the plant was losing nearly 94,800 PLN a month just on that one machine. The maintenance team was frustrated because replacing the 1,400 PLN sensor, which they did three times, achieved nothing. Management had already begun considering buying a new machine for over 470,000 PLN, which would have been financial suicide at that point. Our task was to find a error in the process, not in the device.
We sat by the line with a watch in hand. We look for losses on the floor, not in Excel spreadsheets, which is why we spent the entire afternoon shift there. We observed not only the machine, but above all the people and their habits when handling molds. It turned out that the problem did not lie in electronics, but in a small error when cleaning mold sockets, which accumulated over eight hours of work. This was a classic example of waste that cannot be seen from behind a desk in an air-conditioned board office.
Numbers don't lie – the plant was losing nearly 94,800 PLN a month just on this one, seemingly efficient machine.
Four hours on the floor with foreman Marek
We met Marek Jasiński, a foreman with 14 years of experience who knew every screw in the plant. Marek was skeptical. He had already seen many advisors in suits who promised miracles but left only a pile of papers. However, instead of a presentation, we put on reflective vests and asked him to show us step-by-step what a mold changeover looked like. It quickly came to light that the procedure, which management had filed in binders, differed from reality by exactly 17 small actions.
Marek Jasiński was doing something he called 'his way of pressure'. It was an improvised method that allowed him to start production faster after a mold change, but caused the temperature sensor to go haywire from vibration after about 40 minutes of work. Marek was not to blame – he simply wanted to hit the target, which was set too high for the old type of molds. Concrete instead of theory: we had to change not the machine, but the way operators set injection parameters at the start of the shift.
During a joint analysis with Marek, we calculated that changing settings by just 3.5 degrees Celsius extends the cycle by half a second, but completely eliminates the vibrations causing the sensor error. For the operator it was a second; for the company it was profit. Marek, seeing that we were speaking his language of a technician and not the language of corporate slogans, himself proposed another 4 improvements in granulate supply logistics. This was the turning point of this cooperation.
72 hours to full line efficiency
We started implementing changes on Tuesday at 7:00. We didn't do a big training in the conference room. Marek Wiśniewski, our boss, stood at the machine together with foreman Marek and trained 12 operators from three shifts directly at the workstation. Each of them received a simple A5 format control card, laminated, which they could pin to the machine. Zero redundant text, only concrete points: what to check, what parameter to set, how to clean the nozzle.
On Wednesday, line number 4 worked without a single stop for the full 8 hours of the first shift. On Thursday, the statistics were even better – OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) jumped from 64.2% to 81.7%. It wasn't magic, but the removal of a bottleneck that resulted from a lack of communication between technologists and people on production. Marek Jasiński stopped feeling the pressure to 'churn out results' at the expense of machine stability, which immediately translated into the quality of details.
By Friday morning, the average cycle time stabilized at a level that guaranteed plan implementation without overtime. Through these 3 days we recover your time and profit – this slogan became a reality for the employees of Baltic Bridge Consulting. On Thursday evening, the operations director called us in disbelief that the counter of rejected parts fell from 11.4% to just 2.8%. This meant that in one week, they made back the cost of our audit with interest.
We look for losses on the floor, not in Excel spreadsheets. We spent the whole afternoon shift there with a watch in hand.
Concrete result: 94,800 PLN savings per month
The summary a month after our visit to Puck was unambiguous. Line number 4 became the most stable point in the entire plant. Costs related to waste fell by 21,300 PLN per month, and the lack of unplanned downtime brought another 73,500 PLN in profit from additional produced goods. The investment in a new machine was cancelled, which allowed the company to maintain financial liquidity in a difficult quarter. Numbers don't lie – a simple change of habits gave a better effect than an expensive lease.
For foreman Marek, the biggest change was peace of mind. Instead of running between failures, he could focus on monitoring quality and training new employees. Baltic Bridge Consulting did not leave behind only a report, but a functioning system that works without our presence. We also introduced a simple bonus system linked to the lack of failures, which motivated the other 4 brigades to take care of the machine park. This is precisely the concrete instead of theory that we implement in every plant.
This was one of 47 successful optimizations we conducted in 2023 in Pomerania. Since then, the company from Puck has contacted us twice more – when planning the layout of a new warehouse and when implementing the SMED system in the assembly department. Our cooperation with Marek Jasiński continues to this day, and he himself has become the biggest ambassador of Lean methods in his company, because he saw that it simply makes his daily job easier.
How to check if money is escaping you too?
Most factory owners in Poland feel that their floor could work better, but they don't know where to start. Often the problem is not a lack of modern machines, but small communication errors and a lack of clear standards accumulated over the years. If your people report a 'sensor failure' for the third time in a week, it is most likely not a problem with the sensor. It is a signal that the process is unstable and that is exactly where your profit is escaping.
At Baltic Bridge Consulting, we always start with a 4-hour zero audit. We enter the floor, talk to people like foreman Marek, and look at the waste counter. We don't promise to fix everything in one day, but we guarantee that after the first visit you will know exactly how much money is left on the production floor. It often turns out that a small correction in the startup procedure is worth more than the most expensive management training for senior staff.
Remember that production optimization is not a one-off project; it is a change in the way of thinking about losses. Our experience with over 114 plants across Poland shows that the simplest solutions are the most durable. We are not looking for someone to blame, we are looking for losses. If you want to check how much we can raise your OEE without buying new machines, we invite you to a concrete conversation about your floor. We recover your time and profit, starting with hard data.
We are not looking for someone to blame, we are looking for losses. A small correction in the startup procedure is worth more than the most expensive training.
