Lift throughput, drop defects, keep the craft.
Bench-level workflow redesign, lean and JIT implementation, and defect-rate reduction for jewelry manufacturing — casting, finishing, setting, and QC — without flattening the craft into a factory line.
Three places the jewelry floor leaks margin you can't see.
Jewelry manufacturing is high-mix, low-volume craft. Standard lean playbooks miss the point — but the underlying disciplines absolutely translate, with the right adjustments.
Wait time is invisible until it's measured.
Pieces spend 70–85% of their time queued between stations — not being worked on. Until WIP and wait time are mapped, every floor manager underestimates how much capacity is already there.
Rework is the silent margin killer.
A 4% rework rate doesn't look bad on the report. But rework consumes prime bench time, breaks flow, and slips delivery dates the customer will remember. The compounding cost is 3–4× the visible one.
Metal and finishing yields drift quietly.
Casting yield, polishing loss, and stone-set yield all move with batch size, alloy, operator, and supplier. Without a baseline and a scorecard, a one-point drift becomes a margin event a quarter later.
Walk the floor, map the flow, fix the bottleneck.
A five-phase system that starts at the bench, not the boardroom. Each phase has a defined exit criterion — measurable, named, and signed off — before the next begins.
Working artifacts your supervisors can run.
Every deliverable is something a bench supervisor or a floor manager will actually use — not a slide deck.
Current-state value-stream map
A single-page map of cycle times, wait times, batch sizes, and yield by station — the artifact every later improvement argues against.
Pilot cell redesign plan
The physical layout, batch sizes, pull signals, and visual controls for the pilot cell — with a defined success criterion and rollback plan.
Defect taxonomy & RCA protocol
The named defect catalog, root-cause-analysis template, and weekly review cadence your bench leads will run after the engagement.
Floor KPI scorecard
Throughput, defect rate, yield by station, and on-time delivery on a single weekly page — the document your floor managers actually look at.
Operator training playbook
Station-by-station training notes for new and existing operators — written for shop-floor use, in your house language, not consultant-speak.
Yield baseline & recovery plan
The measured baseline for metal, finishing, and stone-set yield — with named recovery targets and the changes required to land them.
Built for four kinds of jewelry operation.
The disciplines are the same; the right intervention depends on whether you are integrated or specialized, and on the volume mix you run.
Multi-bench manufacturing floors
Vertically-integrated operations running casting, finishing, setting, and QC under one roof — where the leverage is in flow between stations.
Casting houses and specialist suppliers
Lost-wax casting operations focused on yield, alloy consistency, and surface quality before pieces leave for finishing.
Finishing & polishing operations
Standalone finishing or setting houses where throughput is constrained by operator hours and the leverage is in station design.
Brand-owned production facilities
Vertically-integrated brands running their own factory — where manufacturing and merchandising calendars need to lock together cleanly.
Floor diagnostic, then sustained partnership.
Manufacturing improvement is not a single project — it's a discipline. The diagnostic establishes the system; the retainer makes sure it survives the next quarter, the next year, the next product change.
Six-week floor diagnostic.
Fixed-scope · single deliverable, no commitment beyond
- Days on the floor — observed flow, measured WIP, time-stamped queues
- Current-state value-stream map and prioritized intervention list
- Pilot-cell scope and rollback plan, ready to run
- Debrief with the owner, ops director, and bench leads
Monthly operations retainer.
Monthly retainer · sustained floor partnership
- Standing weekly Zoom with floor management; on-site visits each quarter
- Pilot rollouts, defect RCA sessions, and operator training cadence
- KPI scorecard maintained — throughput, defect, yield, on-time
- Quarterly review with the leadership team, against the original baseline
Questions floors ask first.
Often paired with this engagement.
Manufacturing efficiency compounds when paired with sourcing on the input side, inventory on the output side, and finance reading the result.
Walk the floor with a second set of eyes.
One conversation is usually enough to identify the two or three highest-leverage moves on a jewelry manufacturing floor. Bring your hardest operational question first.