Market-Leading Medical Device Manufacturer — Reducing Backlog by
Optimizing Flow Linkages
Situation
A market-leading medical device manufacturer with billions in
annual revenue held approximately 80% market share in several core product
lines. Manufacturing backlogs grew to more than six months, delivery performance
deteriorated, customers began sourcing from competitors, and market-share
erosion became a serious concern for senior leadership.
The Real Constraint
A broad, functionally organized improvement program had been
launched across order entry, production planning, configuration management,
engineering, manufacturing, and supporting processes. While each function
implemented meaningful improvements, overall backlog remained largely unchanged.
The governing constraint was broken interdepartmental flow: misaligned
sequencing, incomplete handoffs, and poorly managed dependencies where work
accumulated between functions.
Leverage Insight
Backlog is created and sustained at the interfaces between
functions. Optimizing individual functions does not reduce backlog if work and
information cannot move cleanly and predictably across organizational
boundaries. The leverage point was end-to-end flow linkage and sequencing.
Intervention
The intervention focused narrowly on optimizing
interdepartmental flow rather than adding new initiatives. End-to-end sequencing
was redesigned so work progressed smoothly across order entry, engineering, and
manufacturing. Dependencies and handoffs were made explicit and actively
managed, and shared visibility into queues and stalled work was established so
issues could be resolved early.
Results
Manufacturing backlog was reduced from over six months to days.
Work-in-process queues collapsed, orders flowed predictably through the system,
delivery performance recovered, and competitive leakage was halted
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