8 proven steps to eliminate waste and boost reliability in your manufacturing plant

If I were dropped into a manufacturing plant today and told to cut the maintenance budget by 15% without hurting safety, quality, or production I wouldn’t start with a meeting, spreadsheets, software, or consultants.

I’d start with my boots on the floor.

In my 30+ years leading reliability transformations, I’ve learned that the biggest savings don’t come from big capital projects or high-tech solutions. They come from eliminating the waste hiding in plain sight. But first, people must be trained to see that waste.
Here’s exactly how I’d attack it — step by step.

1. Start with a chalk circle observation

Before changing anything, spend 24 hours (spread over three days) observing real work on the shop floor. No clipboard. No stopwatch. Just watch.

Tell the crews you’re “walking a mile in their shoes” to understand what they put up with daily. This is how you see current state.

Why start here? Because the real inefficiencies live on the floor, not in the conference room. KPIs may guide you where to look, but only observation reveals reality and solutions.

You’ll likely see:

• Planners printing work orders but never checking parts or supplies.
• Mechanics walking half a mile per job to find tools, parts, and supplies.
• PMs performed that no one can tie to a failure mode.
• Crews pulled off planned work for emergencies.
• Wrench time sitting under 15%.

Seeing the work, not the metrics, is where the savings hide. Too many leaders skip this and chase best practices blindly. That wastes time, money, and credibility (it rarely works).

2. PM Kaizen: stop doing worthless work

Too many plants perform PMs out of fear, habit, or outdated 1950s standards. In my experience, about 30% of PMs don’t address a real failure mode and can be eliminated.

Hold a PM Kaizen event: a focused effort to review and rationalize all PM tasks. For each one, ask five simple questions:

1. Does this PM address a real failure mode?
2. Is the frequency correct?
3. Is the duration reasonable?
4. Can manpower be reduced?
5. Can inspections be replaced with condition monitoring?

Do this in three rounds:

• PM Kaizen I: One minute per PM. Eliminate obvious waste fast.
• PM Kaizen II: Ten minutes per PM. Conduct deeper review and adjustment.
• PM Kaizen III: Up to one hour per PM. Optimize the essentials.

This process frees up manpower, cuts overtime, reduces contractor dependence, and improves uptime.

Pro tip: Watch for inflated PM durations: a common planner trick to cover emergency interruptions in planned jobs.

3. Add a planned job kitter/stager 

Want to double your crew’s productivity overnight? Assign one experienced technician to a kitter/stager role. This person partners with the planner to assemble everything needed for a job: tools, parts, drawings, and supplies. The shift before execution, the verified kit is delivered to the work site along with any needed mobile equipment.  

This simple move can raise wrench time from 15% to 30%, effectively doubling your crew size without hiring anyone.

4. Use administrative rules to protect planned work

Here’s a truth: The only way to improve reliability, safety, and cost is to perform more planned work with excellence. But in most plants, planned work gets hijacked by emergencies. You won’t see this in KPIs — only on the floor. And once a crew gets pulled away, precision and completeness suffer.

Fix it with structure:

• Separate technicians into planned and unplanned work crews.
• Unplanned crews handle emergencies based on a clear priority system.
• If they’re overwhelmed, only the plant manager can reassign planned resources.

I enforced this rule as a plant manager. Know how many calls I got to move people? Zero.

5. Focus on a few

Not all PMs deserve equal attention. If you’re not at 100% compliance, choose which assets or failure modes matter most. Ask: “If we improved lubrication PMs from 50% to 100%, would the plant notice?” Most likely yes. 

Identify three to five focus areas where you want excellence and direct your planners there. Concentrating resources creates momentum and measurable wins.

6. Invest in condition monitoring tools and training

Once waste is cut, reinvest the some freed-up manpower into predictive technologies (vibration analysis, infrared, lubrication monitoring, and ultrasonics). Condition monitoring detects issues long before a time-based PM or breakdown occurs. It reduces downtime, improves repair time/cost, and enhances root-cause analysis.

7. Add problem solving

Structured problem solving is the engine that sustains long-term reliability gains. You don’t need a complex system—just one that everyone understands and uses consistently.
Ideas that work:

• Assign a dedicated reliability engineer to focus only on strategic failures. Keep them out of daily firefighting.
• Create OEE teams that meet monthly to review a “Top 10 Problems” list with clear actions and deadlines.
• Try “5 Why Wednesdays”—one hour per week where maintenance and operations jointly dissect a recent failure using the 5 Why method.

The trap? Trying to solve everything. Focus on problems that matter year after year.

Example: If a pump fails after 30 years, replace it. No root-cause needed.

8. Get the leadership team excited about waste elimination

For lasting impact, leaders must learn to see waste themselves. The best way? A Chalk Circle Observation Workshop.

How to run it:

1. Sell the vision. Promise your team an eye-opening week that will change how they view performance.
2. Train coaches. Each coach gets a two-hour prep session before the workshop.
3. Set the schedule. Half-day Monday (training), full days Tuesday–Thursday (observation), half-day Friday (wrap-up).
4. Teach observation. Monday covers the seven forms of waste and how to spot them.
5. Observe the work. Tuesday through Thursday, each team shadows one maintenance crew from toolbox talk to shift end.
6. All teams debrief daily. Compare notes and identify recurring themes.
7. Act fast. On Friday, rank waste themes by impact, difficulty, and cost, then build a 30-, 60-, and 90-day action plan focused on zero cost quick wins.
   Once leaders learn to observe reality, they will never again guess what needs improvement; they will know it.

Spot the everyday inefficiencies

Cutting a maintenance budget by 15% is not about working harder or taking risks—it’s about attacking the waste already built into your systems. The biggest opportunities do not require capital or consultants. They live in the everyday inefficiencies people walk past.

When you train teams to see waste, protect planned work, and relentlessly focus on meaningful improvements, you reduce costs and build a stronger, safer, more reliable operation.

Start with observation. Act with purpose. The results will follow fast.