Empowering Sunseeker International to reduce overdue furniture by 60% in six months
Improving production prioritisation, flow and daily operational control
Sunseeker International, a luxury yacht manufacturer, was struggling with a growing backlog of overdue furniture components, delaying boat builds downstream.
Teams were working on too many orders at once, production sequencing did not always reflect what the boat build needed next, and managers lacked a shared view of where attention was most urgently required.
We worked with production teams and management to improve how work was prioritised, give the business clearer visibility of overdue orders and constraints, and build that information into the daily management process.
The result was a 60% reduction in overdue furniture within six months.
Key Issues
High Work-In-Progress
Production teams were working across too many orders rather than concentrating capacity on completing the most important work first.
That created unnecessary Work-In-Progress and meant jobs spent longer moving through production before they were completed.
Misaligned production sequencing
Similar work was often grouped together because it was efficient for an individual production area.
This made sense locally, but it did not always reflect the sequence in which the wider boat build needed components.
As a result, lower-priority work could progress while more urgent orders remained outstanding.
Limited priority and performance visibility
There was no shared view showing which orders were most important, where overdue work was concentrated, what was preventing those orders from progressing, or how delivery performance was changing across teams.
This made it harder for managers and team leaders to intervene early, focus attention where it was needed most and see whether performance was improving.
Approach
Shared production priorities
We brought overdue and priority orders into a single ranked view, so managers and team leaders were working from the same list.
Teams could see which jobs to finish before starting new ones, which helped reduce unnecessary Work-In-Progress and move orders through production more quickly.
Visible constraints and team performance
We built dashboards showing where work was queuing and what was holding it up, whether that was a particular team, a missing input or an issue with a specific order.
Managers could also track delivery performance by team and see which issues needed escalating, so they knew where to step in.
Daily management reporting
We helped managers and team leaders build the dashboard into a daily stand-up.
Each morning, teams used it to plan the day, agree priorities, tackle constraints and track progress on overdue work.
It quickly became the centre of how the operation was run.
Results
Reduction in overdue furniture
Overdue furniture components reduced by 60% within six months.
Internal OTIF
Internal On-Time-In-Full (OTIF) increased by 27% over the same six-month period.
Management
Problems were spotted and escalated earlier, giving managers the chance to act before delays built up.
“Helped the Technology Centre site reduce overdue components by 60% within six months.”Steve Timms, Chief Operating Officer