Global Automotive Components: The Plant That Stopped Arguing

What the Team Was Living With

Global Automotive Components runs a 200,000 sq ft facility producing precision components for major automotive OEMs. The equipment was modern. The people were experienced. But something wasn’t working.

Performance swung unpredictably — the same cell could have a strong day and a terrible one, with no clear reason why. Shift handoffs were tense. Outgoing crews felt blamed for problems they didn’t cause. Incoming crews inherited situations they didn’t understand. Supervisors spent their mornings hunting through spreadsheets and paper logs trying to reconstruct what had happened overnight.

The real frustration wasn’t that the numbers were bad. It was that nobody could explain them.

• Mystery downtime — hours lost to stoppages nobody could account for
• Finger-pointing between shifts — without shared facts, every handoff became a debate
• Micro-stoppages invisible to everyone — two-second stops that added up to hours
• Delayed information — end-of-shift reports arrived too late to act on

What Changed

Swip Tools deployed Attainment Tracker across 12 production cells in three phases. The goal wasn’t to install a scoring system — it was to give everyone the same picture at the same time.

Phase 1: Making Work Visible (Weeks 1-2)

• Installed Attainment Tracker on 4 pilot cells
• Configured cycle counting and state detection so the team could see running, blocked, setup, and offline states in real time
• Trained operators on tablet-based downtime entry — their input shaped the categories

Phase 2: Expanding the Picture (Weeks 3-4)

• Rolled out to the remaining 8 cells
• Integrated with SAP for production order context
• Supervisors and management got dashboards showing flow state first, outcomes second

Phase 3: Learning from the Data Together (Weeks 5-6)

• Adjusted alert thresholds based on what the team learned in the first month
• Teams built improvement plans around what the data actually showed — not assumptions
• Established daily reviews where the conversation started with “What’s blocked?” not “Who’s behind?”

What the Team Discovered

Once everyone could see where time was actually going, the conversations changed. Supervisors stopped interrogating operators and started asking what was getting in their way. Shifts stopped blaming each other because the handoff now came with context — what was running, what had been blocked, and why.

Micro-stoppages turned out to be a much bigger factor than anyone had guessed. Changeover time came down once the team could see setup as explicit, trackable work instead of a hidden penalty baked into production numbers.

Over the first year, the plant saw OEE move from 58% to 78% — a 35% improvement. Unplanned downtime dropped from 4.2 hours per day to 1.8. Changeover time fell from 45 minutes to 28. First-pass yield climbed from 94.2% to 97.8%.

But ask Jennifer Martinez, the plant manager, what mattered most, and she doesn’t lead with the numbers. She talks about the shift handoffs.

What Made It Work

1. People trusted the data — because it explained what happened, not who was at fault
2. Operators shaped the system — their input on downtime categories made the data accurate
3. Setup was treated as real work — not hidden inside inflated standards
4. Daily reviews focused on flow — what’s blocked, what’s next — not performance scores

What’s Next

The team is bringing Attainment Tracker to their second facility — not because someone mandated it, but because the first plant’s crews asked for it. They’re also deepening their use of downtime cause data to guide maintenance planning and working with Swip Tools to improve changeover visibility.

Want to give your team the same kind of visibility? Start a conversation.