MANUFACTURING COMPANIES
What a Small Factory Owner Should Review Every Week
The owner stands on the shop floor at seven and answers the dispatch question. He signs a purchase for steel he did not plan for, then sees a customer ringing for the third time about a late order. By evening he cannot say which jobs made money this month.
The fix is routine, not heroics. We set up costing before a quote goes out, a weekly machine plan, tracking of material and rework, a collection habit, and clear limits on what supervisors can decide. We coach your managers to run it. Products, machines and processes remain with your engineers.
Discuss your priorities ↗COMMON CHALLENGES
The pressures
we often see.
- 01Quotations are based on last year's rate for a similar part, so raw material, power and labour changes slip through without anyone noticing.
- 02Production planning lives in the head of one supervisor, and when he is absent, jobs start in the wrong order and urgent orders wait.
- 03Rework and rejections are fixed on the floor and never counted, so the cost of a bad batch never reaches the owner's review.
- 04Raw material is bought in bulk to catch a price, which locks up cash while another line waits for a small item that ran out.
- 05Customers pay on their own schedule, and the owner knows his sales figure but not how much is stuck with which buyer.
OUR FOCUS AREAS
Where the work
usually starts.
- 01A costing sheet per product with material, scrap allowance, machine hour, labour, power and overhead shown line by line
- 02The weekly production plan: which job goes on which machine in which order, and what is blocking it
- 03A job card that records start, finish, quantity good, quantity rejected and the reason
- 04Raw material and consumable stock with a reorder point for the five items that stop a line
- 05Machine downtime logged by cause, so repeated breakdowns appear as a list
- 06Outstanding invoices by customer with the promised date and the person following up
- 07Supervisor responsibilities: what each can approve without calling the owner
- 08A monthly review of the top ten customers by profit, not turnover
START THIS WEEK
Things you can do
before you call anyone.
- Choose your three biggest products and recompute their cost today using current material, power and labour rates. Compare that figure with the last price you quoted. Do not change anything yet; only look at the gap.
- Ask the stores in-charge to list the items that stopped a machine in the last month. These are your critical stock items. Give each a minimum quantity written on the bin.
- Hypothetical example: you make a part sold at ₹120 with ₹100 cost. One in twelve parts is rejected at inspection. The scrapped cost per good part rises by about ₹8, so your margin drops from ₹20 to ₹12.
- Every Friday, write down four numbers on one page: orders shipped on time, rejections, stock outs and money collected. Do this by hand for one month before you look at any software.
A PRACTICAL ENGAGEMENT
Start with the priorities
that matter most.
We begin by understanding how your business runs today, find the gaps, and agree the scope in writing. Recommendations are shaped around your team, your resources and your goals.
- A one-page weekly dashboard of orders due, orders late, rejection count, stock risks and money to collect
- A costing template for new quotations that your estimator and the owner both use
- A job card and shift handover format for supervisors
- A role chart and a weekly review meeting agenda for owner, production, stores and accounts
Not the right fit when: Handle it elsewhere first if the problem is a quality failure the customer has already escalated, a safety incident or a statutory notice. The right professional comes before any business routine.
Explore a business audit ↗LET’S MOVE YOUR BUSINESS FORWARD
