In July of 2008, I stepped out of an engineering leadership role and into an operational role. The transition was exciting and overwhelming. While I had been in and around manufacturing for a little more than a decade, I had never operated as a part of supply chain or production management. The closest I had really been to this side of the business was as a program manager, but even that role was predominantly engineering-based. My initial marching orders were simple: Turn the business around. For the month of July, our on-time delivery (OTD) was 64 percent, our scrap per earned hour (total dollars scrapped divided by total hours put to stock or earned hours) was $15, and our quality failures were hovering around 40,000 parts per million (PPM). While margin was not terrible, all other indicators were. If you did not catch the date above—July 2008—we were starting this initiative just before the great global recession.

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