JS Jake Stevens

Industrial engineering · Independent practice

Your plant already has the capacity. It's buried in the process.

I find the hours your operation loses to travel, changeover, rework, and unmanaged shift routine — then I rebuild the process so they come back. Stopwatch in hand, on your floor, in your language.

Detailed project documentation available under mutual NDA → request access

108%

Throughput increase on a bake-oven cell, via capacity racking and alternating schedules

2h 29m

Cycle time removed per unit across a full remanufacturing line

62%

Faster work-instruction rollout versus paper-based systems

3 wk

Fastest documented ROI breakeven on a deployed process system

The premise

Most capacity problems are not capacity problems.

When a plant can't hit its number, the reflex is to add a shift, add a line, or add people. Sometimes that's right. More often, the constraint isn't the equipment — it's the twenty-two minutes an operator spends walking, the fixture that takes four attempts to seat, the cool-down cycle nobody has questioned since it was commissioned, or the shift handoff that transfers no information.

Those losses don't appear on a P&L. They appear as a quota that everyone privately knows is soft. Finding them requires someone willing to stand at the station with a stopwatch and ask why — repeatedly, and without an agenda about the answer.

That's the work. Not a slide deck about lean. A measured baseline, a specific list of what's costing you time, an engineered fix for each one, and a management routine that keeps the gain after I leave.


What I do

Four things, done to a documented standard.

01

Time & method study

Element-level timing of every station, with a written cause for each loss and an estimated time saving attached to every recommendation.

  • Baseline vs. quota analysis
  • Station-level element timing
  • Capacity & staffing models
  • Line balancing
02

Management operating systems

The routine that makes a gain permanent: shift transitions, huddles, dashboards, and the supervisor coaching that keeps them honest.

  • Shift transition & huddle design
  • Daily short-interval control
  • Supervisor assessment scorecards
  • Current-state & target-state MOS flows
03

Process & tooling design

When the fix is hardware, I design it — full drawings, bills of material, sourced parts, and assembly documentation you can hand to a shop.

  • Fixture & workholding design
  • Automation cell conversion
  • Assembly/disassembly process sheets
  • BOM development & sourcing
04

Work instruction & compliance

Standard work that survives contact with the floor — including projected AR systems for regulated and cleanroom environments.

  • Digital & AR work instructions
  • Traceability system design
  • Regulated-change impact analysis
  • Ergonomic & biomechanical assessment

Where this applies

Sectors I know from the floor up.

If your process involves discrete units moving through stations on a clock, the method transfers.

Food & protein processing Line balancing, yield and downgrade loss, sanitation-to-startup transitions, USDA grading interface, staffing models tied to volume forecast
Remanufacturing & heavy equipment Teardown and rebuild sequencing, test cell throughput, fixture and workholding design, scrap-first flow routing
Automotive & powertrain Engine assembly process sheets, torque and part-number control, blast and finishing cell automation, changeover reduction
Medical device & regulated Design-control-aware process change, cleanroom-compatible work instruction, traceability architecture, 510(k) change assessment support
General mid-market manufacturing Capacity studies, OEE loss trees, supervisor development, daily management routine, ergonomics and workstation design

How an engagement runs

No surprises, no open-ended retainer.

PHASE 01

Analysis

One to three weeks on site. I time the work, map the flow, interview supervisors, and build the baseline. You get a written opportunity list with an hours-and-dollars figure attached to each item.

PHASE 02

Scoping

We agree which opportunities are worth pursuing and what the target is. If the analysis says the honest answer is "your process is fine, buy another line" — that's what the report says.

PHASE 03

Implementation

Engineered fixes get designed and installed. Routines get built and run with your supervisors, not at them. I work the shift the problem is on, including nights.

PHASE 04

Handover

Documentation, dashboards, and a trained supervisor group. The measure of a good exit is that the number holds ninety days after I'm gone.

Next step

Tell me what number isn't moving.

A first conversation is free and usually takes half an hour. If I don't think I can help, I'll say so and point you at someone who can.