The job that stops when one person calls in sick
The growth plan gets approved on Monday. On Tuesday, your setup lead tells you he retires in March, and line 3’s changeover steps leave with him.
You’ve probably lived some version of that. A quote waits because one estimator is out. Second shift runs slow because the person who knows the old press works days.
That’s the enabling layer: the thing everything else sits on, and you don’t notice it until it breaks. In a plant, that’s the know-how in your strongest people’s heads. If it lives in three people’s memory, more equipment or another shift won’t help — it just adds weight to the same people.
What to do this week: Pick one critical job. Have your most experienced operator walk it while someone records the steps and the “watch for this” moments on a phone. Put it where the floor already works, with one owner and a visible revision date. One job a month, and in a year you’ve removed twelve single points of failure.