This producer of fresh and frozen hamburger patties operated two major facilities serving restaurant chains, grocery chains, and foodservice distributors, and rising customer demand left no room for the losses piling up at one plant in particular. There, annual yield loss averaged 3.8% while a sister facility held 2.5%, and the gap was not one leak but many: roughly 1% blood loss at the initial dumping stations, 1% in sanitation waste, 0.5% in bone-separator waste, 0.8% in packaging give-away, 0.5% from miss-scanned inventory, and another 1% to 1.5% from periodic equipment failures in the grinding room. On top of the yield problem sat high turnover, mechanical failures, and continuous daily firefighting just to meet demand.

The deeper problem was that no one was positioned to fix it systematically. The plant had recently hired a new Director of Operations, a new Plant Manager, and a new Plant Superintendent, all fresh in their roles, and none inherited an established Management Operating System to run to. Management meetings were poorly defined and ineffective, producing no decisions or follow-through. KPIs were reported only sporadically, and the team did not trust their accuracy or importance, so no one acted on them to take corrective action.

Underneath that, performance expectations were neither set nor enforced, between managers and supervisors or between supervisors and their direct reports. A second shift staffed 80% with temporary employees and a steady churn of human and equipment resource changes left managers overwhelmed and stuck in an ad-hoc, day-to-day scramble that strained the workforce. Leadership did not need a single one-time fix; it needed an operating system that would close the losses at their source and give a brand-new team a consistent way to run the plant.

POWERS ran two efforts in parallel. To attack yield loss, the team installed Statistical Process Control charts on eight production lines to control patty and package weights, then placed reclamation tubs at the identified loss points to capture excess meat. Those tubs were a bridge: outside contractors, OEMs, and third-party maintenance replaced them with permanent mechanical fixes such as guides and improved conveyance. A study on bone-separator effectiveness justified the purchase of an improved system, a daily waste-meat review was put in place, carryover meat was added to daily production meetings, and plant management was trained to run a daily review of production and yield reporting.

To rebuild frontline leadership, POWERS defined standard work routines and the required performance outcomes for supervisors and managers, then backed them with periodic audits and coaching. The cadence and purpose of plant planning and performance-reporting meetings were defined, and effective meeting behaviors and action logs were coached so meetings produced decisions and follow-through. The management team was coached to honor commitments through on-time action completion and standard-work follow-up, supported by Gemba walks and shift huddles that raised managerial communication and follow-up across the floor.

Together, the two efforts changed how the plant operated. Losses that had been invisible were now measured, owned, and closed at their source, and a leadership team that had been firefighting daily had a real operating system to run, with defined meetings, accurate reporting, and routines that held shift to shift.