[{"content":"The Situation A PE-backed protein processor had two high-speed packaging lines running at 50% OEE. The acquisition thesis depended on operational improvement, but the plant had been stuck at that number for over a year. Changeovers were running 50+ minutes, unplanned downtime was eating 20%+ of available time, and the maintenance team was in reactive mode.\nWhat We Did Days 0–30: Stabilize and baseline. Mapped the constraint (Line 2 filler), built the OEE loss tree, and established baselines with finance. Installed tiered daily management — shift huddles feeding a daily ops review feeding a weekly SIOP cadence. Got the data flowing before touching the equipment.\nDays 31–60: Attack the top losses. SMED on the constraint — took changeovers from 50 minutes to 31 minutes (38% reduction). Ran RCAs on the top 5 unplanned stops. Deployed operator-led TPM with visual standards. QR-linked SOPs at every workstation.\nDays 61–90: Lock and replicate. Playbooks documented. Train-the-trainer completed. Power BI dashboard live with real-time OEE by line, shift, and SKU. Replicated SMED methodology to Line 1. Built the 12-month capital-lite roadmap for the next phase.\nResults (Verified) Metric Before After Impact OEE (both lines) 50% 75% +25 points Changeover time 50 min 31 min −38% Unplanned stops Baseline −22% SAP analytics + coaching Annualized savings ~$1.1M All savings audited with plant finance and PE operating partner.\nWhat Made It Stick The difference between a turnaround that holds and one that fades is whether the team owns the system after you leave. We certified 4 internal CI leads, embedded the daily management cadence into the plant rhythm, and left dashboards the ops team actually uses — not ones that collect dust.\nCompany details anonymized. Engagement completed under contract leadership.\n","permalink":"https://brc-opsadvisory.com/case-studies/oee-turnaround-protein-processor/","summary":"Two packaging lines stuck at 50% OEE. 90 days later: 75% OEE and $1.1M in annualized savings.","title":"+25 OEE Points in 90 Days"},{"content":"The Situation A food processing facility faced a pre-Easter demand surge requiring 25,000 meals per day — roughly 40% above normal run rate. Previous years had relied on heavy overtime and temporary labor, blowing up the labor budget and creating quality issues from fatigued crews.\nWhat We Did Takt time redesign. Calculated the required takt for 25K meals/day and mapped it against actual cycle times at each station. Found three bottlenecks that could be solved without capital — crew rebalancing, stagger-start scheduling, and a SMED event on the salad line changeover.\nCrew balancing. Rebuilt the crew matrix to balance workload across stations instead of having overloaded constraints and idle upstream positions. Cross-trained 8 operators on secondary positions to enable flexible deployment.\nSchedule adherence. Installed a visual schedule board with hourly tracking. Shift leads owned the cadence. Any miss greater than 15 minutes triggered an immediate response, not an end-of-shift discussion.\nResults (Verified) Metric Result Daily output 25,000 meals/day sustained Overtime Zero Quality No increase in customer complaints Method Takt redesign + crew balancing Key Takeaway You don\u0026rsquo;t always need capital or overtime to hit surge targets. Sometimes the capacity is already on the floor — it\u0026rsquo;s just allocated wrong. A takt analysis and crew rebalance cost nothing and delivered 40% more throughput.\nCompany details anonymized. Engagement completed under contract leadership.\n","permalink":"https://brc-opsadvisory.com/case-studies/pre-easter-ramp-meal-production/","summary":"Pre-Easter demand surge required 25K meals/day. Delivered via takt redesign with no overtime spend.","title":"25,000 Meals/Day Ramp with Zero Overtime — Seasonal Surge"},{"content":"The Situation A CPG plant was running acceptable OEE numbers but bleeding money on scrap. The problem: scrap was tracked in aggregate monthly totals, not by line, shift, or defect type. Nobody knew where the waste was actually coming from, so nobody could fix it.\nWhat We Did Built the defect Pareto. Installed shift-level scrap tracking by defect category. Within two weeks, the data showed that 60% of scrap came from three defect types — two related to setup errors and one to a sensor calibration drift.\nPoka-yoke implementation. Designed and installed mistake-proofing at the three root causes:\nFirst-piece verification fixture for the setup-related defects Visual alignment guides at the problem stations Automated sensor check added to startup sequence Operator coaching. Ran targeted training with the crews that had the highest scrap rates. Not punitive — just skill gaps that had never been addressed because nobody had the data to see them.\nResults (Verified) Metric Before After Impact Scrap rate Baseline −19% Significant yield improvement Annualized savings ~$260K Defect categories Untracked Pareto by shift/line Visibility enabled targeting Key Takeaway Scrap is the quiet cost that PE firms miss during diligence. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t show up as a line item — it\u0026rsquo;s buried in COGS. Once you make it visible at the shift level, the fixes are often simple and cheap. Poka-yoke doesn\u0026rsquo;t require capital. It requires understanding what\u0026rsquo;s actually going wrong.\nCompany details anonymized. Engagement completed under contract leadership.\n","permalink":"https://brc-opsadvisory.com/case-studies/scrap-reduction-poka-yoke/","summary":"Scrap was the invisible P\u0026amp;L drain nobody was tracking properly. Poka-yoke implementation cut it 19% and saved $260K annually.","title":"19% Scrap Reduction via Poka-Yoke — $260K/yr Savings"},{"content":"Brian Crusoe I\u0026rsquo;ve spent 10+ years in food and CPG manufacturing — running production floors, leading turnarounds, and building the systems that keep plants running after the consultants leave.\nWhat makes me different: I don\u0026rsquo;t just know Lean and Six Sigma. I build tools for the plant floor because I got tired of watching operations teams drown in data they couldn\u0026rsquo;t use. The OEE Analyzer exists because most plants still track OEE in spreadsheets nobody trusts. The cost calculator exists because I kept seeing vendors quote 30% of the real number.\nI work at the intersection of shop floor operations and modern technology — not because it\u0026rsquo;s trendy, but because that\u0026rsquo;s where the biggest gaps are. Most technology consultants have never run a shift. Most plant managers don\u0026rsquo;t have time to evaluate digital tools properly. I\u0026rsquo;ve been on both sides.\nI take contract engagements of 3–12 months, and I\u0026rsquo;m open to performance-linked compensation because I trust the results.\nCertifications Lean Six Sigma Black Belt CMRP — Certified Maintenance \u0026amp; Reliability Professional CTP — Certified Turnaround Professional SAP / Power BI Industries Food Processing Consumer Packaged Goods Beverage Pet Food Protein / Meat Connect LinkedIn Email ","permalink":"https://brc-opsadvisory.com/about/","summary":"Brian Crusoe — 10+ years in food \u0026amp; CPG manufacturing operations","title":"About"},{"content":"If your plant needs a turnaround, your PE portfolio needs operational value creation, or you want to deploy analytics that actually work on the floor — I\u0026rsquo;d like to hear about it.\nEmail: justcode432o@gmail.com\nLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/briancrusoe\nI respond within 24 hours. Initial conversations are always free.\n","permalink":"https://brc-opsadvisory.com/contact/","summary":"Let\u0026rsquo;s talk about your operations challenges","title":"Get in Touch"}]