Insights
Practical pieces on operations, systems and AI for New Zealand businesses. Written from the floor, not from a textbook.
Most owners go looking for the bottleneck on the floor. In more than nine cases out of ten it is sitting outside the business entirely, and no amount of internal improvement will touch it.
Inventory looks like an asset on the balance sheet and behaves like a problem on the floor. What changed when we cut spare parts stock by 40 percent and service went up, not down.
Move offshore or stay in Christchurch. Both sides were right, which is why the argument never settled. The businesses that found a third answer had asked a better question.
Most owners point at the machine that breaks down most. It is almost never the constraint, and chasing it costs you a year.
Automating a mess gets you a faster mess. Here is the order to do it in, and what is genuinely worth automating first.
Twelve questions, about four minutes, and your answer on screen.