“Tenali… customers are shouting about delays. Production says jobs are moving. Stores say material is issued. Inspection says work is pending. But nobody can tell me where a job actually is!”
Tenali smiled.
“Then your factory has production activity… but no production visibility.”
“Tell me:
How many active jobs are running today?”
“About 137.”
“How many can you track in real time?”
Maharaj paused.
“Maybe… 20?”
Tenali continued,
“Average customer follow-up calls per day?”
“Nearly 45.” Maharaj answered.
“Jobs delayed beyond promised date?”
“28%.”
“Average WIP inventory increase in six months?”
“22%.”
“Owner calls to production supervisors daily?”
Maharaj sighed.
“Too many to count.”
Tenali nodded.
“The issue is not manpower.
The issue is lack of a real-time Job Management System.”
He drew three stages:
Raw Material → Processing → Dispatch
Then asked:
“At any moment, can your team identify:
Which job is where,
for how long,
and why?”
Silence filled the court.
Tenali finally revealed the hidden leak:
“You are not losing money because machines are slow.
You are losing money because information is slow.”
They implemented a simple stage-wise tracking system with live status updates and bottleneck monitoring.
Within three months:
Delivery delays dropped sharply.
Customer escalations reduced.
And production planning became predictable.
Maharaj smiled.
“So the real bottleneck was invisible.”
Tenali said, “Exactly Maharaj.
Factories don’t collapse because work stops.
They collapse because visibility stops.”