Bob C. was a frontline employee with 25 years of experience. His day was spent operating a machine that stripped and terminated leadwire assemblies. Problem was, there were more than 1,000 different assemblies, and it seemed that, while the machine was always busy, it was always behind schedule. Because these wire assemblies were needed for virtually every product his company manufactured, stockouts were a highly visible frustration.

Industrial engineers addressed the stockout issue by purchasing a new high-speed wire machine. The machine performed several operations in a single pass and cut cycle times in half, but it took much longer to set-up than its predecessor. And because the new machine was very noisy, Bob’s department was moved far away from his internal customers and enclosed in soundproofing foam.

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