How does the factory get deliveries started after the holidays without stress or unplanned shutdowns?

Five principles help the factory get back on track after the holidays:

1. known and agreed capacity,

2. documented and followed-up losses,

3. daily management with high precision around the time off,

4. clearly communicated target states for the post-holiday period,

5. ongoing orders in all processes at closing with the next order prepared and ready.

Factories that work in this way shorten the startup period from weeks to days.

The pattern is recognisable in most factories. The period before the holidays is characterised by a scramble to meet promised deliveries, every shift, every day, right up to the very last minute.

The causes behind the stress are well known:

• quality defects,

• maintenance-related stoppages,

• replannings,

• customer promises that do not match the flow's capacity,

• material shortages

• unpredictable leaves of absence.

The last delivery is waved off with pride, and the team goes on a well-deserved break. Then something strange happens.

The same characteristics return after the holidays, slowing down both deliveries and all good initiatives, often throughout August and well into September. The same thing is repeated around Christmas and New Year.

This guide explains why the pattern recurs year after year and what it takes to break it.

Why does the startup get sluggish after the holidays year after year?

The startup gets sluggish because the problems that existed before the holidays were never resolved, only paused. The symptoms we see before and after holiday periods can likely be regarded as a receipt for all the deviations that occur every day throughout the year. They just become extra visible during these specific periods. The holidays do not solve any root causes.

The quality defects, maintenance needs, and planning deviations that created the stress in June remain and wait in August, now reinforced by machines having stood idle, materials not having flowed for weeks, and parts of the staffing still being on leave or new.

The scope is larger than most admit. All in all, we can see periods of 2 to 6 weeks before the holidays and equally long periods after the holidays, characterised by our holiday behaviours. This occurs in most businesses at two shutdown periods per year: summer and Christmas/New Year. A total of 4 to 12 weeks per year, i.e., 1 to 3 months annually, where we accept deviations from the normal.

To compensate, many try to reduce the holiday period from a possible four weeks to three, or even two. A better question is the reverse: could we shut down the production apparatus for a longer period, since more employees are on leave at the same time? What positive consequences would that have, and what would be required?

Three mechanisms explain most of the sluggishness:

Losses are unknown or undocumented. Many factories know they have losses, but not exactly which ones, how big they are, or where they occur. Without that knowledge, nothing can be resolved during the summer, and the autumn begins with the same losses as the spring ended with.

Capacity is assumed, not known. When planning, sales, and forecasting work toward a capacity that doesn't match the flow's actual capability, customer promises arise that production cannot keep. The gap grows faster than most realise. If the capacity in the flow is only 5% below the planned and thus promised capacity, production loses 1 day against the plan per month. If the difference between actual capacity and promised planned capacity is 20%, the loss amounts to one day per week. How do we make up for lost production? In practice: overtime, extra shifts, hired staff, replanning, and express shipments. What do these recurring, unjustified measures cost? Those questions are rarely asked, but those are exactly the costs that the gap between promise and capability drives, and the gap is at its largest precisely when the factory is running at half steam during startup.

Startup is driven by feeling and desire instead of facts. The first weeks after the holiday are when deviations are most common, and shift experience is often thinnest. Yet, this is often when follow-up is most sparse. The problem is discovered days or weeks after it has started driving up costs.

The question, then, is not why the startup is sluggish. The question is why we allow this condition to return when we can measure, analyse, and resolve the causes.

Why should the goal be the desired state on the first working day after the holidays?

The goal should be the desired state on the first planned working day after the holidays, because that is when the customer meets the factory again and the goal forces a planned ramp-up instead of a forced shutdown.

A perspective we often hear is that "we are working towards the goal of the last production day before the holidays". The difference in time between the two goals is marginal, or rather non-existent, but conceptually huge. The one aiming for the last day before the break optimises to get finished. The one aiming for the first day optimises to get started, and then prepared orders, ready-to-use materials, and verified processes become part of the goal state instead of something that has to wait.

A thought experiment makes the principle clear. If we chose the perspective that we could go on holiday basically any day of the year, this phenomenon would likely not occur. A factory that can be paused and restarted has, by definition, control over its processes, orders, and capacity. From this perspective, holiday readiness is not an annual effort but proof of order and control in everyday operations.

Which five principles make shutdown and startup controlled?

Five principles make shutdown and startup controlled and predictable: known capacity, followed-up losses, daily precision, clear target states, and prepared orders.

1. Known and agreed capacity. Know and agree on your actual capacity, then plan around it.

2. Document losses and follow up on them the same way you do with a White Sheet. Identifying, measuring, and following up on the losses that slowed you down before the holiday forms a constant foundation for future holiday periods. White Sheet is a specific way of working for the entire organisation that standardises and improves ramp-down and ramp-up methods during holiday periods. We address losses instead of waiting.

3. Daily management with high precision. The last weeks before the holidays and the first days after the holiday period are managed and followed up daily with high precision and high resolution. Factories that work in this way shorten the startup period from weeks to days.

4. Clearly communicated and accepted objectives. The goals refer to desired states after the holidays, and reconciliations against the objectives begin well before the holiday period. Examples: utilisation rate, backlogs, cleared material, production order, and sequence correctness.

5. Ongoing orders at closing, prepared for start. Strive to ensure that all processes in the flow have ongoing orders at the time of closing, ready to resume immediately after the holiday period, and that upcoming orders are prepared with materials, instructions, tools, instruments, and the like. This avoids choking supporting functions and cannibalising resources.

What should be done before the break to ensure a fast startup?

Build a controlled, predictable ramp-up before the holidays: prepare the next order per process as much as possible, document losses and the working methods we consider deceitful and not beneficial, plan actions for downtime and ensure startup weeks are planned based on actual capacity.

Use loss analysis as a packing list. An OEE system that logged stops, causes, changeovers, and quality outcomes during the spring knows exactly which losses slowed deliveries. Break them down by cause, line, and article. The largest and most recurring losses are candidates for action during the holiday shutdown, when maintenance and improvements can be carried out without disrupting production. These losses form the basis of the shutdown and startup document that will support improvements ahead of the next holiday period.

Give maintenance facts, not gut feeling. The holiday shutdown is the best maintenance window of the year, but it is only enough for a fraction of everything that could be done. Data on which technical stops recur, on which machine parts, and at what cost lets maintenance efforts be prioritised based on the faults that actually disrupt deliveries. At Sibbhultsverken, technical stops fell by 73% in twelve months by identifying recurring errors in the data and resolving them at the root cause.

Align capacity with planning and sales. Before the holidays is a good time to calibrate autumn plans against actual capacity. Actual capacity is not the theoretical speed of the machines, but what the flow actually delivers with the current OEE value. A line with an OEE of 55% delivers 55% of its theoretical capacity, and that is the figure the customer should use until the losses are resolved. When sales, planning, and production work towards the same fact-based capacity, a large part of the replannings disappear before they even arise.

How are the startup weeks themselves best managed?

Manage startup weeks with daily management at a faster pace than normal, with real-time facts and lower thresholds for flagging deviations. It is now crucial to detect deviations quickly.

Run the morning meeting every day, preferably short and standing. Review yesterday's outcome against plan, last night's stops and causes, and today's risks around staffing and materials. During startup, some factories may also schedule a quick midday check-in, as problems can come fast during the first few days.

Let real-time data do the work. Dashboards showing status against plan allow production management to see within hours if a line is falling behind, not just at the end of the week. The timeline shows exactly what happened during the night, with stop causes coded by the operators who were there. Andon alerts maintenance and quality directly when something needs immediate help, so waiting doesn't consume shifts.

Verify data quality during the first days. After a long stop, machine signals, shift schedules, or article data may have drifted. Check early that the measurements are correct; otherwise, you'll manage based on the wrong information during the weeks when you need facts most.

Lower the threshold for coding and commenting. New or rusty staff can more easily miss coding stops. Remind them why stop coding matters, and keep it simple. A growing "Other" category during startup is an early warning sign that the analysis is losing its foundation. At Orkla Nidar, the "Other" category disappeared completely when operators were given tools that made it easy to code the correct cause directly.

How do you break the pattern long-term?

The factory breaks the pattern by learning its actual capacity, systematically working away losses during the year, and aligning planning, sales, and production around the same facts. Then both the holiday rush and the sluggishness afterwards disappear.

Four questions are a good starting point for that discussion:

Do we know our actual capacity? Not the theoretical but the measured one. If not, continuous OEE measurement is the first step.

Are we aligned with planning, sales, and forecasting on which capacity to relate to? If production and the sales organisation work with different numbers, customer promises will always break somewhere, and it usually happens in production, in the weeks leading up to a holiday.

Do we allow sequence deviations in the run plans during the year that must be tied together in an unreasonably short time before the holidays? Deviations accumulated over several months cannot be caught up in two weeks. The data shows where the deviations occur and how big they are, long before they become a June crisis.

What losses do we have in our processes, and do we have a plan to resolve them for the coming year? That is the core question. A factory that systematically measures, analyses, and addresses its losses increases its actual capacity step by step. This shrinks the gap between promise and capability, and with it, both the rush and the backlog.

The answer to all four points is the same: start measuring and following up with high resolution, and lean on facts instead of memories. Kavli, the Norwegian food group, produced 5,000 tons more than the previous year without more shifts or more machines. This shows that the capacity was in the factory all along. It became available after the losses were visualised and eliminated.

How does Good Solutions' platform help with startup and capacity optimisation?

Good Solutions' platform is built to drive improvement work based on facts, and that is exactly what a fast startup requires. Before the holiday, the loss analysis shows which losses can be addressed during a potential summer shutdown. Dashboards and timelines provide daily management with real-time facts during the startup weeks. The operator tool ensures that stop causes are coded exactly when they occur, even by new or temporary staff. The reports give planning, sales, and management the same view of the actual capacity that production is working towards.

Two parts are particularly relevant for factories wanting to break the startup pattern. Good Solutions' restart program is a five-day program that secures data quality, verifies machine signals, increases competence in various roles, and establishes a clear structure for improvement work—exactly what a factory needs after a period when work has lost momentum. The OEE policy workshop brings together decision-makers and key individuals for a half-day to define and document what is measured and how, laying the foundation for planning, sales, and production to work toward the same capacity targets.

The platform currently supports around 300 factories. The pattern of those who succeed is the same: the startup goes quickly when losses are known, capacity is measured, and the first weeks are driven by facts.

See more examples of results from many different factories here.

FAQ

How long should a startup after the holidays take? With prepared measures, verified data quality, and daily management of facts, production should be back to its normal pace within a few days to a week. If the startup regularly takes all of August, it is a sign the root causes haven't been addressed.

What is the most important thing to do before the holidays? Three things.

1. Use the loss analysis to list the largest and most recurring losses.

2. Prioritise the holiday shutdown's maintenance and improvement efforts based on the list.

3. Align autumn plans and sales against actual, measured capacity instead of theoretical capacity.

How do we know our actual capacity? Through continuous OEE measurement. Actual capacity is theoretical capacity multiplied by actual OEE. A line with an OEE of 55% delivers 55% of its theoretical capacity, and plans and customer promises should be based on that figure until the losses have been worked away.

Why isn't it enough to run harder in the weeks after the holiday? Because rushing does not resolve the underlying causes. Running harder with the same losses yields the same results, plus more stress, more scrap, and a higher risk of new stops. Capacity is freed up by addressing the losses, not by pushing the same flow harder.

We have lost momentum in our OEE work during the year. How do we get started again? Start by verifying data quality, as trust in the numbers is the foundation for everything else. Then restart daily management with short meetings based on production facts and select 2 to 3 prioritised losses to address first. A structured restart program, like Good Solutions' Restart Program, provides a clear framework over five days, ensuring data, skills, and working methods fall into place at the same time.