A manufacturing company in eastern Bohemia ran production seven days a week, and had still been losing money for years. High reject rates, complaints, and production management that ran more on habit than on any system. Every extra shift was supposed to bring in more money — instead it mostly brought more fatigue and more mistakes.
This story comes from our own practice, and it points to one uncomfortable truth: more hours worked doesn’t automatically mean more money.
Starting Point: More Shifts, Still Not Enough Money
At first glance the picture looked simple: demand was there, production couldn’t keep up, so people worked weekends too. But the numbers didn’t add up. A high reject rate meant a chunk of what got produced ended up as scrap or came back as a complaint. Weekend-shift costs kept climbing; margins didn’t.
The usual reflex in this situation is to invest in new equipment or hire more people. Both cost money a loss-making company doesn’t have — and both treat the symptom, not the cause.
What the Interim Manager Did
Our interim manager joined the company with a mandate to restructure production, raise efficiency, and get the company back into the black. In practice, this was the role we place as an interim production director — with a mandate directly from leadership and a clearly defined goal.
He didn’t start by buying machines. He started with a thorough analysis: where time was being lost, where defects were happening, and which steps in the process added no value at all. Based on that, he introduced the key changes:
- A new shift model — production moved from round-the-clock operation to a more efficient shift arrangement.
- Cutting unnecessary steps — operations that only consumed time and capacity disappeared from the process.
- Better planning — production started running on a plan instead of daily firefighting.
- Quality control built into the process — errors get caught before they turn into scrap or a complaint.
The Results: The Same Output in Five Days
- Same production volume in 5 days instead of 7.
- Lower reject rate and fewer complaints, saving the company significant costs.
- Higher productivity with no additional investment in technology.
- After many years, a return to profit and restored financial stability.
For the people on the shop floor, it meant one more thing no spreadsheet will show: weekends off again.
Why the Internal Team Couldn’t Fix It Themselves
The seven-day operation wasn’t a capacity problem. It was a symptom of how the company was being managed. But it’s hard to see that from the inside — when you live it every day, you stop seeing it as a problem and start treating it as normal. Management is buried in day-to-day operations and has no time or distance left for systemic change.
An interim manager arrives without operational blind spots, with a clear mandate from the owner, and on a limited timeline. He doesn’t need to build a position for himself or prove anything long-term. His job is to make it work now — and to make sure it keeps working after he leaves, without him. If problems in production are growing into a crisis for the whole company, it’s also worth considering an interim CEO who can take over management more broadly.
When to Pay Attention
Typical signals that this isn’t a capacity problem but a management one: overtime turns from the exception into the permanent state, the reject rate and complaints aren’t coming down over time, the production plan gets rewritten several times a week, and leadership spends most of its time on day-to-day operations instead of management. If you recognize more than one of these, it’s time to act before the losses deepen.
If your production has been running overtime or weekends for a long time, ask yourself one question: is it because you have that many orders, or because time and material are getting lost somewhere along the way? If you don’t know the answer with confidence, that’s a good reason to look at operations through outside eyes.
Need help on your team? We’re here for you — whether it’s short-term cover or solving complex situations. Big Interim is your partner for interim management.
