Precast managers often come to us with three big questions:

• Is now the right time to make an investment in modernizing my plant equipment?
• Where should we invest to achieve the greatest return?
• How can we relieve intense pressure on unit cost that is eroding our profits?

1. Is the concrete plant a bottleneck? Are workers waiting around for the concrete? Could more be sold if the plant could produce more?
2. Does quality suffer from inconsistent concrete output? Is there a higher-than-normal scrap/disposal cost and higher labor costs associated with patching and re-works?
3. Does the concrete plant have a high cost ownership? In other words, are maintenance costs high, with downtime causing low plant utilization? Are labor costs high because of obsolete equipment? Is the plant keeping pace with today’s safety and environmental standards?
4. Is in-plant concrete distribution inefficient, adding to production costs?
5. Are information systems inadequate? Is management getting the hard data needed to make continuous real-time improvement decisions?
6. And finally, is the plant losing market share and missing out on opportunities because of plant equipment constraints? Does management want to differentiate their company from the competitor through better quality, more value, and faster turnaround but can’t?

The goal of a plant assessment is to identify the issues and then find the best solutions that fit within a given budget and timeline. Often, we can modernize existing plant infrastructure, updating only a few key components. Is it time to evaluate how an investment in the right plant equipment can deliver results? We’ll take that up in Part 2.