Doubling your production capacity without building a new site
Secteur
Food industry / plant breeding — seed production
Profil entreprise
Mid-sized industrial company; production tool mostly manual and highly seasonal
Mission
Factory Roadmap — the transformation roadmap for an industrial site: an industrial maturity assessment that evaluates the site across five complementary levers, then prioritizes actions to take, from quick wins to structuring investments.
Enjeu
Prepare for a volume step-up by deciding between renovating the existing site or building a new one
AUTRES CAS INTERESSANTS
Diagnostiquer la performance actuelle
Définir et prioriser l'usine cible
Chiffrer l'impact sur le P&L
Download this Use case's file
Résumé
When demand exceeds what a plant can produce, the reflex is to expand or build new. An industrial assessment often shows the opposite: part of the missing capacity is already there, blocked by flow organization rather than by machines. Here is the case of a mid-sized company in plant breeding that wanted to double its internal production capacity — and what an assessment revealed before any investment.
Résultats Pertinents
a potential doubling of internal capacity was identified without building a new site — by acting first on organization and flows.
AUTRES CAS INTERESSANTS
“We knew our industrial tool had to evolve, but we didn't have the elements to arbitrate between renovating and rebuilding. Dillygence structured our thinking: diagnosis of real flows, cost modeling, scenario comparison. We now have two clear options on the table — automate the existing site or create a new tool — with the data to decide. And in parallel, the first Lean actions are already deployed. We didn't wait for the big project to improve.”
— The company's executive
Résumé
This case is relevant if you recognize yourself in one of the trajectories below:
Your demand already exceeds what you produce, and you assume you will need to build or invest heavily to keep up
A volume step-up is approaching and you must arbitrate between renovating the existing site and building new
Your performance relies on the know-how of a few key operators, not on shared standards
A significant part of your production is outsourced, and the internal/external trade-off has never been set with facts
You have never formalized a Lean approach: operational excellence, automation and Industry 4.0 remain to be structured
Your working capital requirement tightens (high stocks, long customer work-in-progress), a sign of operational friction
Results you can expect
What the approach enables for your organization:
Unlock capacity already present. Standardizing work and aligning operators on the best observed level recovers throughput without touching machines.
Decide based on quantified scenarios. Renovating the existing site or building new is decided by comparing two quantified options, not by intuition.
Clarify the make-or-buy trade-off. What is produced internally and what is subcontracted becomes an explicit decision, grounded in actual costs and the product mix.
Sequence investment. Low-cost quick wins come first; heavy capital is reserved for the conditions where it pays off — batching (multiple shifts) and process autonomy.
Stabilize inventory and planning. Stock segregation and demand-driven control reduce the frictions weighing on working capital.
Context: growth puts push flow under strain
This case is relevant if you recognize yourself in one of the trajectories below:
Your demand already exceeds what you produce, and you assume you will need to build or invest heavily to keep up
A volume step-up is approaching and you must arbitrate between renovating the existing site and building new
Your performance relies on the know-how of a few key operators, not on shared standards
A significant part of your production is outsourced, and the internal/external trade-off has never been set with facts
You have never formalized a Lean approach: operational excellence, automation and Industry 4.0 remain to be structured
Your working capital requirement tightens (high stocks, long customer work-in-progress), a sign of operational friction
Objectives of the intervention
Assess the site's performance and industrial maturity across five complementary levers.
Distinguish capacity constrained by machines from capacity constrained by organization.
Quantify and compare two investment scenarios: automate the current site, or build a new tool.
Draw up a prioritized roadmap, from quick wins achievable without CapEx to the structuring decision.
Results you can expect
Method: actions carried out
A sequence that activates what pays back quickly and at low cost first, before committing heavy capital.
Performance and industrial maturity assessment. Flow mapping and evaluation across the five levers. The starting point was low: most industrial performance dimensions scored close to zero — a common situation in an organization that has never formalized a Lean approach.
Operational foundation — short term. Deployment of Lean basics (standard work, SMED on cleaning changeovers, TPM), organization of preventive and corrective maintenance, and creation of a Methods and Continuous Improvement lead.
Inventory and logistics — short term. Stock segregation to manage quality and sanitary risks, container management and location, upstream anticipation of orders with farmers.
Product mix reset. Focus internal production on higher-value seeds, and produce the others only to support this activity.
Investment scenario quantification — mid/long term. Comparison between automating the current site, on the order of €10M, and building a new site, with a clear rule: automation pays back only under two conditions — batching (multiple shifts) and process autonomy.
Planning and control. Move to demand-driven planning (DDMRP) for inventories, and a digital layer (production supervision, data) to move away from control relying solely on a few people's know-how.
These levers are prioritized in a single roadmap. This is exactly what the Factory Roadmap mission provides: a sequenced trajectory, from quick wins to the investment decision, turning dependence on know-how into organized performance.
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Results of the industrial diagnosis
These are potentials quantified during the assessment and targets for 2030, not measured results after deployment. They provide a trajectory and an order of magnitude.
Internal capacity.
Target: double internal production, without necessarily building a new site. Part of this gain is achievable with unchanged organization — the assessment estimated about +50% capacity potential from aligning operators on the best level alone, without major investment.
Revenue. The potential revenue increase identified builds on this capacity ramp-up and the product mix refocus.
Mix profitability. Bring the less profitable production at least to break-even, where it had been loss-making, by concentrating internal production on higher-value seeds.
Investment decision. Two quantified scenarios on the table — automating the existing site or building new — to decide with data rather than intuition.
For you, the interest lies in the method deployed: Factory Roadmap shows where your own gains are, in what order to activate them, and under what conditions a heavy investment becomes profitable.
AUTRES CAS INTERESSANTS
Assembly standardization: turning an assembly bottleneck into continuous flow
Standardization in assembly: a standard reduces variability without making the workshop rigid. A shop-floor approach involving tolerances and indicator-based management.
From modular cells to a flexible paced assembly line: produce more without expanding the factory
Designing a paced and flexible assembly line: takt time, pitch, cycle time, buffers, and digital twin validation.
Industrial diagnosis: absorb growth without suffering it
Modernizing a site without kidding yourself: an industrial assessment powered by data and automation.
Industrial facility layout study: target −33% lead time before building the new unit
What can be expected from an industrial site selection study? Simulated operational results—not ROI or NPV, which are calculated subsequently if needed.
What it means for each decision-maker
The same assessment is not read the same way depending on the seat you occupy.
Executive / CEO. The question is “what share of my target capacity is reachable without investments?”. Framing the make-or-buy and renovate-or-build trade-offs calmly, based on quantified scenarios, avoids committing capital before exhausting organizational gains.
Industrial Director. The topic is phasing and payback conditions. An automated machine that runs one third of the time or requires a permanent operator is not profitable: without batching and process autonomy, CapEx is wasted. Knowing the sequence often matters as much as the action itself.
Site Director. The fastest gains are on the shop floor, at near-zero cost: standard work, SMED on cleanings, maintenance organization, aligning operators on the best level. Capacity recovered before any investment.
Misconceptions vs pitfalls avoided
“To double capacity, you must build or invest heavily.” In many industrial cases, part of the missing capacity is unlocked through flow reorganization and waste elimination, before any concrete.
“We can do it internally.” Mapping flows and prioritizing levers by impact requires a method and a distance that daily operations rarely leave available.
“Automating automatically means gaining.” Without batching and process autonomy, an under-used automated line costs more than it returns. Pitfall avoided: committing investment on the order of €10M on the existing site without comparing it to a new one.
“A profitable site stays profitable.” Producing a loss-making product over time, without resetting the mix, slowly but surely erodes margin. The assessment puts product value back at the center of the trade-off.
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Conclusion
Doubling your production capacity does not always start with a construction project or ordering machines.
It starts with a question: where, exactly, is the capacity you are missing located?
In this plant breeding mid-sized company, part was found in flow organization and team level, achievable without heavy investment; the remainder depended on an investment decision to be built on quantified scenarios.
Factory Roadmap is used to make this distinction — prioritize levers by impact and effort, and commit capital only where it pays back.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a Factory Roadmap assessment take?
It is a time-boxed intervention, structured around the five levers. The deliverable is a prioritized roadmap, not a theoretical report. The scope is set with you depending on the site's size and complexity.
Do you need to stop production?
No. The approach starts from observing the real flow and prioritizes quick wins — standard work, stock segregation, reducing cleaning times — that can be deployed without stopping operations.
Does the assessment really help choose between renovating a site and building a new plant?
It puts the two quantified scenarios side by side, with their payback conditions. The decision remains yours, but it is based on orders of magnitude, not intuition.
We think we're already well organized — what's the point?
This is common when performance holds thanks to reactive teams. The assessment is precisely to reveal capacity constrained by organization, invisible day to day, and to confirm — or not — the priorities.