The company sold library and archival supplies and library design services into a market that was shrinking, and its core sales were already in decline. To boost revenues and capture economies of scale, it acquired a competitor in 2010. Sales did grow through 2010 and 2011, but the acquisition and integration costs were high and the deal added operational complexity rather than simplifying it. The result leadership could not escape: labor costs stayed constant while revenue dropped.

Underneath that pressure sat a deeper structural problem. The operation had no effective management operating system to convert effort into performance. Only one-third of the basic system elements even existed or worked, and 43% of those needed upgrading. Standards did not reflect what the work actually took, the man-hour forecast had no correlation to output volume, and there was no visibility into variable work volumes or capacities. Supervisors were left to manage people and resources largely on instinct, and an atmosphere of complacency kept anyone from pushing to find or fix the weaknesses.

Leadership did not need a one-time cost cut that would erode the moment attention moved on. They needed the system itself rebuilt: the tools, standards, and routines that would let supervisors see the work, plan against it, and manage to it across both facilities every day.

POWERS designed the missing systems, tools, and standards, then ran supervisory workshops covering both technical supervision and interpersonal management so frontline leaders could actually use them. The team taught the operation how to develop and implement correct standards, and worked with client IT to build a real-time performance indicator that let operators see how they were tracking to standard during the run rather than discovering it at the end. Workstation layouts were reorganized to cut steps, handling, and motion within the work cells, which drove a 15 to 20% performance improvement in certain high-volume workstations.

In parallel, POWERS attacked capacity and staffing across the operation. Existing call center data was extracted and graphed to determine call volumes by day, hour, and duration, and an appropriate crewing model was built that eliminated excess coverage. Staff from other departments were cross-trained in customer service so calls routed to backup people instead of dropping or sitting on hold, holding service high at lower crew levels. New volume-visibility tools let managers predict peaks and valleys by history, seasonality, and promotions, and during slow periods cross-trained distribution staff shifted into manufacturing.

The distribution centers were reworked as well. More efficient rack layouts and two consolidations freed prime lower-level space for faster-moving material and catalogs, and the rearranged inventory made picking faster and less labor-intensive. Together, the rebuilt operating system, real standards, crewing models, and warehouse changes gave supervisors the means to schedule production properly, crew to actual demand, hold down work-in-process and finished-goods overbuild, and lower cost per transaction.