Where the hours go
James spent six years in food manufacturing: the graduate production manager programme, then operations manager, then plant manager. The managers he worked with lost days a week to admin: retyping what was already on a form, chasing a document somebody had already sent, answering the same spec question for the tenth time.
A good first process passes five tests
- It happens every day or every week.
- It follows rules a new starter could learn.
- It arrives as documents or emails.
- Someone checks it anyway.
- You can count the hours it takes.
Where that usually is, department by department
- Intake and supply: weighbridge tickets matched to every load by 7am.
- Production: the morning report written the same way every day, by 7am.
- Quality: failed loads traced and release packs checked before QA signs.
- Maintenance: work requests by voice note, with the asset and a photo.
- Health and safety: contractor papers checked before anyone arrives on site.
- Environment and energy: every lab result checked against the licence limits.
- R&D and technical: past trials searchable, with the report and page shown.
- Stores and dispatch: stock near its age limit flagged, export papers checked.
- Procurement: supplier certificates checked against the spec as they arrive.
- Finance: invoices matched to order and goods receipt before anyone sees them.
- Sales and customer service: customer questionnaires drafted from your approved documents.
- People: handbook questions answered; with an HR pilot, training and onboarding chased.
These are examples from food, not a fixed list. If the job taking your team's hours is not here, that is the one to look at.
What to leave for later
- Anything that needs a judgement call every time.
- A process that changes every week.
- Work nobody measures, because you won't know if it got better.
Some things stay out altogether. Nothing here touches line control or the ERP's books, and nothing decides anything about a person: hiring, hours, allocation of work or performance. Those uses are high-risk under the EU AI Act.
Check it before anyone builds
Pick the job your team complains about most and time it for a week, in a form the people doing it fill in themselves. That number is your baseline. A pilot measures the same thing, the same way, for the same length of time after go-live, and their manager signs off both.