Professional services
A 60-person firm that no longer runs on its founders' evenings
+11 ptsoperating margin over two years
Manufacturing
A precision parts maker that stopped promising dates it could not keep
A 140-person machining business had a full order backlog and late deliveries. Nine months later, lead times were a third shorter and the sales team quoted dates the floor could meet.
- Ostrander Precision
- 2025
- average lead time in nine months
- −34%
- of orders shipped on the date first quoted
- 96%
- a week of planning meetings, down from nine
- 2 hrs
Ostrander Precision makes machined parts for pump and valve makers. Demand had doubled in four years, and so had the number of late orders. Every customer call started with an apology.
What we found
The review traced the delays to one place: sales quoted dates from a spreadsheet that knew nothing about the machines' real load. Planning then reshuffled the week every morning to protect whoever had shouted loudest.
- Quoted lead times ignored the bottleneck machines.
- Nine hours a week went on planning meetings that changed little.
- Nobody owned the schedule once it left the planning office.
What changed
We set up one weekly capacity meeting, with sales and production at the same table, and a simple rule: no date goes to a customer until the capacity sheet says it can be met. A production planner took ownership of the schedule, and we coached her through the first three months.
Where it stands
Average lead time fell by a third in nine months. The planning meetings now take two hours a week. Dana Okafor, the CEO, took her first two-week vacation in six years.
They didn't hand us a binder and leave. They sat in our Monday meetings until we could run them ourselves.
Next case study
