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Use Case: Transforming Manufacturing Operations

This is a realistic example of how a multi-site manufacturer used flow metrics inside monday.com to identify bottlenecks, reduce work-in-progress (WIP), and deliver faster—without hiring more people or buying more machines.

Company Profile

  • Industry: Specialty chemicals (short shelf-life, limited ability to build stock)
  • Footprint: 3 plants + centralized quality and regulatory team
  • Work type: Make-to-order batches with frequent changeovers and variable demand
  • Tooling: monday.com boards for order intake, production execution, QA release, and shipping

The Challenge

The company believed its problem was “capacity” because teams were always busy. In reality, the system was overloaded with WIP: batches waited days between steps (production → QA sampling → lab tests → release → packaging). Expedites were common, priorities changed daily, and lead times were unpredictable.

  • On-time delivery: ~72% (measured at customer promise date)
  • Typical end-to-end lead time: 18 days (P85 at 29 days)
  • Hidden queue: QA release was the constraint, but it wasn’t visible in day-to-day planning

What They Implemented in monday.com

They kept their existing monday.com workflow boards, but added Flusss apps to make the flow visible and actionable across plants.

1) Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD)

The CFD immediately showed where WIP was accumulating. The “QA Release” band widened week after week, confirming a systemic bottleneck (not a one-off incident). The team could also see when upstream stages were producing faster than QA could release—creating more queue.

2) Lead Time Histogram

Instead of arguing about averages, the team used percentiles. They set an explicit service expectation: “85% of batches should complete in ≤ 14 days.” The histogram made distribution shifts visible after each change (WIP limits, staffing policies, release cadence).

3) Aging WIP

Aging WIP surfaced stuck batches early (e.g., a lab retest, missing COA, or a blocked packaging slot). Daily standups moved from “What’s everyone doing?” to “Which items are aging beyond policy and why?”

4) Kanban Swimlanes

They introduced explicit classes of service: Expedite, Date-Certain, and Standard. Swimlanes made priority rules visible, reduced “priority thrash,” and protected QA capacity by limiting the number of parallel expedited items.

The Operating Policies They Changed

  1. WIP limits per stage: A hard cap for “In Production”, “In QA”, and “Ready to Ship” to stop launching work faster than the constraint could absorb.
  2. Release cadence: QA moved to a predictable release window (twice per day) to reduce batching and waiting.
  3. Constraint-first staffing: Cross-trained one operator per shift to support QA sampling during peaks instead of keeping every upstream station at 100% utilization.
  4. Explicit expedite policy: Expedites required a reason + cost-of-delay, and were limited to a small, fixed number at any time.

Results (12 Weeks)

  • Lead time: 18 → 11 days median (≈40% reduction). P85 improved from 29 → 16 days.
  • On-time delivery: ~72% → ~93% (with fewer last-minute expedites)
  • Total WIP: ~220 → ~140 batches in the system (less queue, less rework churn)
  • Stability: Fewer priority changes; teams spent more time finishing work than reshuffling work

Why This Worked

The breakthrough wasn’t “working harder.” It was making the flow visible and managing the constraint. Flusss apps turned monday.com data into operational signals: where WIP accumulates (CFD), how long work really takes (Lead Time Histogram), which items are at risk now (Aging WIP), and how priorities should be handled (Kanban Swimlanes).

How to Replicate This (Quick Checklist)

  • Map your real workflow stages in monday.com (including waiting states like QA release)
  • Install CFD to identify where WIP is accumulating
  • Use Lead Time Histogram to set percentile-based expectations (P50/P85)
  • Use Aging WIP daily to manage risks early, not after the due date is missed
  • Use Kanban Swimlanes + WIP limits to stabilize priorities and protect the constraint

Want to apply the same concepts to your workflow? Explore flow fundamentals and see how Flusss apps bring them to monday.com.