Cement, aggregates and ready-mix producer · 1 cement plant, 4 quarries, 6 batching plants · 310 employeesThis War Map shows how we turn an operational review into an implementation plan. The dates show a possible sequence; the scope and schedule of a real engagement are agreed with you.
Findings
Where work gets held up, who has to step in, and what it costs in this example.
Trucks parked at the gate
About 35 trucks a day wait at a weighbridge while the operator phones sales admin or credit. Each hold averages 38 minutes, and the morning queue at the cement plant reaches the public road.
Delivery notes that change after departure
About 12 notes a day are amended after the truck has left: wrong site, wrong product code, a load split across two orders. The nightly import rejects them and Sage X3 is corrected by hand.
Ready-mix changes on the day
19 of 44 concrete orders observed changed on the pour day. The dispatcher retypes each change into a batching PC and calls the drivers one by one.
Two people hold the flow
The weighbridge lead knows which haulier loads for which customer. The dispatch board lives in the dispatcher's Excel file. When either is away, the gate and the batching plants slow down.
Illustrative time allocation for 11 interview roles
- Phone calls to unblock trucks and orders
- 27%
- Re-keying and corrections
- 22%
- Planning and dispatch
- 19%
- Customer, plant and improvement work
- 18%
- Checks and sign-offs
- 14%
These scenario percentages total 100%. They describe task categories for the 11 interview roles and are not extrapolated to all 310 employees.
49% of the observed time goes to phone calls and re-keying. Planning and dispatch take 19%, checks and sign-offs 14%. 18% is left for customers, plant performance and improvement work.
SOP vs. Reality
The weighing itself is automatic and takes a few minutes. The waiting comes from what the operator cannot see: the open order, the delivery site and the customer's credit status. 11% of trucks need a phone call before loading, and each of those holds averages 38 minutes.
Each concrete order is typed three times: in Sage X3, on the dispatch board and in the batching PC. On the observed day, 19 of 44 orders changed after 6:00. Every change goes through Julien by phone or WhatsApp, and the batching PC only knows what he types.
Most corrections are small: a site address, a product code, a load split between two orders. Each one still needs the paper copy, a confirmation from the plant and a manual edit in Sage X3. The weighbridge keeps the original, so the two systems disagree until month end.
When a primary crusher stops, the quarry stops. The repair is fast when the technician knows the machine. The time goes on finding the last intervention and the right part, because the history sits in paper logbooks and a parts list kept by Thierry's team.
Claire spends about three days a month gathering figures from weighbridge exports, laboratory PDFs and the blasting contractor. She signs the report and checks every value again by hand. Year-to-date extraction against the permitted maximum is only visible once a month.
Work that needs attention
Risk Register
Strategy Session · 30 min
A real engagement is scoped in the Strategy Session and may begin with a War Map or a bounded Feasibility Sprint.