Manufacturing — Caytana Labs

WHERE MARGIN LEAKS

04 places to look

01QuotingDrawings, RFQs and historicals reconciled by hand, with your best estimator as the bottleneck and the slowest quote losing the job.

02Changeover and schedulingPlans built on the last shift's assumptions, then rebuilt by whoever is on the floor when reality disagrees.

03Quality and reworkDefect causes known informally and rediscovered every time the line runs a variant it has not seen for months.

04MaintenanceFixed intervals on some assets, run-to-failure on the rest, and no way to say which is costing more.

AI ENGINEERING

Reading drawings and RFQs, pricing against historicals, and escalating only the edge cases to the estimator who used to price everything.

DATA & DIGITAL

MES, ERP and quality systems reconciled into figures the plant and the finance function both accept.

PROCESS TRANSFORMATION

The paperwork path rebuilt so automation is the default and the human step is reserved for judgement.

Including the crews on other shifts, because that is usually where the workarounds live.

WEEK 01–02

Two weeks of sessions with estimators, planners and supervisors across shifts — watching the process run rather than reading a document.

WEEK 03–06

One product family, historical quotes as the baseline, measured against what the estimating team actually achieved.

WEEK 07–14

Integration with MES and ERP, security review, and a staged rollout by product family.

ONGOING

Runbook, training and an on-call window while the plant's own team takes it over.

PLACEHOLDER — SWAP IN REAL ENGAGEMENTS

MANUFACTURING

An intake agent reads drawings and RFQs, prices against historicals, escalates only edge cases.

WHAT IT TOOK

[PLACEHOLDER — CONFIRM ENGAGEMENT LENGTH, TEAM SHAPE AND CAPABILITIES INVOLVED]

WHO RUNS IT

[PLACEHOLDER — CONFIRM WHO OPERATES IT TODAY AND WHAT THE HANDOVER INCLUDED]

Bring us the process your best estimator is the bottleneck for.