See where the money goes: the calculator now shows its work
The calculator has always ended in a number: what a point of a KPI, or a whole use case, is worth a year at a plant like yours. As of this week it shows where that number comes from.
Both views, By KPI and By use case, now draw a chart under the answer. It starts from the KPI or the use case, runs through the measures behind it, and ends on the P&L categories and line items where the money lands. The wider the band, the more of the value it carries. Where several measures land on the same line item, their bands meet, so you can see which lines the value really depends on. A red band makes EBITDA smaller: a cost that rises, or revenue lost.
Sold out, right next to the answer. "Can the plant sell more if it makes more?" now sits just above the result, and the result shows the figure for the other answer as well. That one question often moves the answer more than anything else on the page. Take predictive and condition-based maintenance at a $250 million automotive plant: about $1.5 million a year if the plant cannot sell more, and about $3.5 million if it is sold out. Flip the answer and the chart shows why. Sold out, the widest band runs to recovered sales volume, $2.1 million of it, because downtime avoided becomes output the plant can sell. Demand-limited, the same use case earns its value in maintenance materials, maintenance labor and scrap.
On a narrow screen, the use case view shows the same figures as a table when the chart does not fit, and the table is always one click away under the chart.
Levers, not results
The calculator prices what an initiative moves. Outcome KPIs such as Profit Margin, Budget Variance and Margin per Unit are the result of other KPIs, not something an improvement program moves directly. They had been topping the calculator's "Biggest levers" list. They no longer appear in either view, so the list now leads with KPIs a plant can actually work on.
One yield KPI, not three. First Pass Yield, Right First Time and OEE Quality Factor were the same calculation under three names, so a plan that chose two of them counted one improvement twice. Right First Time and OEE Quality Factor are retired from the KPI library, the calculator, plans, baselines and Priorities. First Pass Yield is unchanged. No company had used either retired KPI in a plan, a target or a recorded value, so nothing you entered has changed.
Two smaller things: OEE's factors now show their full names in the calculator, and industry-typical KPI levels read with their units ("75.0%", not "75percent").
Corrections
The new chart earned its keep in its first week. Two things it made visible are now fixed.
Stockout savings count whether or not the plant is sold out. Running out of stock costs sales in any plant. Use cases that cut stockouts, through better inventory accuracy, supplier risk management or inventory buffers, now earn that value in both cases. Before, each counted in only one of them, and which one was inconsistent: Inventory Accuracy & Visibility was worth about $200,000 less in a sold-out plant for that reason alone. At a $250 million food and beverage plant it is now worth about $670,000 a year either way. Extra output is the one exception. When the plant is sold out, more output already counts as recovered sales volume, so it is not counted a second time as fewer stockouts.
Issuing more supplier corrective actions is no longer charged as a cost. Incoming Material Control traces defects back to the supplier that caused them, so it raises the number of corrective action requests sent to suppliers. That is the point of it, but each request was being costed, and the chart showed it as red bands. That charge is gone. At a $250 million food and beverage plant the use case is now worth about $1.2 million a year in a demand-limited plant, up from about $860,000.
Where to start
Open the calculator, choose By use case, and pick one you are weighing for next year. Answer the sold-out question both ways and follow the widest band. If most of the value lands somewhere you did not expect, that is worth knowing before the business case goes to finance.
Calculator figures are for an industry-typical plant of the chosen size and industry, at typical maturity. Your own baseline will give different numbers.