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

Five principles help the factory recover after the holidays:

1. known and agreed capacity,

2. documented and monitored losses,

3. daily management with high precision around scheduled 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 this way shorten the startup period from weeks to days.

The pattern is recognizable in most factories. The period before the holidays is characterized by a scramble to meet promised deliveries, every shift, every day, right up to the finish line.

The reasons behind the stress are familiar:

• quality defects,

• maintenance-related stops,

• re-planning,

• customer promises that do not align with the capacity of the flow,

• material shortages

• unpredictable time off.

The final delivery is waved off with pride and the team goes on a well-deserved break.

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 goes through why this pattern recurs year after year and what is required to break it.

Why is the startup after the holidays sluggish year after year?

The startup becomes sluggish because the problems that existed before the break were never resolved, only paused. The symptoms we see before and after holiday periods can likely be seen as a report card of all the deviations occurring every day throughout the year. They just become extra visible during these specific periods. Holidays do not solve root causes.

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

The scope is larger than most admit. Collectively, we can see periods of 2 to 6 weeks before the holidays and equally long periods after the holidays characterized by our holiday behaviors. This occurs in the majority of operations during two shutdown periods per year: summer as well as Christmas and New Year. A total of 4 to 12 weeks per year, i.e., 1 to 3 months annually, where we accept deviations from the norm.

To compensate for this, many try to reduce the holiday period, from a possible four weeks to three and even two. A better question is the reverse: could we shut down the production facility for a longer period, since more employees are off 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 large they are, or where they occur. Without that knowledge, nothing can be resolved during the summer, and autumn starts with the same losses that spring ended with.

Capacity is assumed, not known. When planning, sales, and forecasting work against a capacity that does not match the actual capability of the flow, customer promises arise that production cannot keep. The gap grows faster than most realize. If flow capacity is just 5% below planned and thus promised capacity, production loses 1 day against the plan per month. If the difference between actual capacity and promised planned capacity reaches 20%, the loss corresponds to one day per week. How do we catch up on the lost production? In practice: overtime, extra shifts, hired staff, re-planning, and express shipments. What do these recurring, unjustified measures cost? These questions are rarely asked, but those are exactly the costs driven by the gap between promise and capability, and the gap is at its largest precisely when the factory is running at half steam during startup.

Startup is driven by feeling and wishful thinking instead of facts. The first weeks after the holidays are the period when deviations are most common and shift experience is often at its thinnest. Yet, this is often when monitoring is most sparse. The problem is discovered days or weeks after it has started driving up costs.

So the question is not why startup is sluggish. The question is why we allow the condition to return when the causes can be measured, analyzed, and resolved.

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 work 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 theoretically major. Those who aim for the last day before the break optimize to finish in time. Those who aim for the first day optimize to get started, and then prepared orders, staged material, 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 take the perspective that we could go on holiday basically any day of the year, the phenomenon would likely not occur. A factory that is ready to be paused and restarted has, by definition, control over its processes, its orders, and its capacity. Holiday readiness is, in this view, not an annual effort but a testament to order and structure in daily operations.

Which five principles make shutdown and startup controlled?

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

1. Known and agreed capacity. That you know and agree on your actual capacity and plan based on this reality and these agreements.

2. Losses are documented and monitored in the same way as a White Sheet. Identifying, measuring, and monitoring the losses that slowed you down before the break forms a constant foundation for future holiday periods. White Sheet is a specific working method for the entire organization that standardizes and improves the procedures for ramp-down and ramp-up during holiday periods. Losses are addressed instead of waiting.

3. Daily management with high precision. The final 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 working this way shorten the startup period from weeks to days.

4. Clearly communicated and accepted targets. The goals refer to desired states after the holidays, and follow-ups against the target begin well in advance of the holiday period. Examples: utilization rate, backlog, cleared material, manufacturing order, and sequence correctness.

5. Ongoing orders at shutdown, prepared for start. Strive to have ongoing orders in all processes in the flow at the time of shutdown, ready to be resumed immediately after the holiday period, and ensure the next orders are prepared with material, instructions, tools, instruments, and the like. This avoids overloading support functions and prevents departments from competing for the same resources during startup.

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

The foundation for a controlled and predictable ramp-up is created before the break: prepare the next order per process to the greatest extent possible, document losses and working methods that do not work, plan measures for the downtime, and ensure startup weeks are planned based on actual capacity.

Use loss analysis as a packing list. An OEE system that has logged stops, causes, changeovers, and quality outcomes during the spring knows exactly which losses have slowed down deliveries. Break them down by cause, line, and item. 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 drive improvements before the next holiday period.

Give maintenance facts, not gut feeling. The holiday shutdown is the year's best maintenance window, 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, allows maintenance efforts to be prioritized based on the faults that actually disrupt deliveries. At Sibbhultsverken, technical stops were reduced by 73% in twelve months, precisely by identifying recurring errors in the data and addressing them at their 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 customer promises should be based on until the losses have been resolved. When sales, planning, and production work towards the same fact-based capacity, a large portion of re-planning disappears before it even occurs.

How are the startup weeks best managed?

The startup weeks are best managed with daily management at a tighter pace than normal, with real-time facts and lower thresholds for flagging deviations. How quickly deviations are detected is crucial now.

Run the morning meeting every day, preferably short and standing. Yesterday's outcome against plan, last night's stops with causes, and today's risks regarding staffing and materials. During startup, some factories may also schedule a brief check-in mid-day, as problems come fast in 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 functions alert maintenance and quality directly when something requires immediate help, so waiting time doesn't consume the shifts.

Verify data quality during the first few days. After a long stop, machine signals, shift schedules, or item data may have drifted. Verify early that the measurement is correct, otherwise you will be managing on the wrong foundation during the weeks when you need facts the most.

Lower the threshold for coding and commenting. New or rusty staff find it easier to miss coding stops. Remind them why stop coding is important and make 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 pattern is broken when the factory gets to know its actual capacity, systematically eliminates losses throughout the year, and aligns planning, sales, and production around the same facts. Then both the rush before the holidays and the sluggishness afterward disappear.

Four questions are a good starting point for that discussion:

Do we know our actual capacity? Not the theoretical but the measured. If the answer is no, continuous OEE measurement is the first step.

Are we aligned with planning, sales, and forecasting on which capacity we should relate to? If production and the sales organization work with different numbers, customer promises will always break somewhere, and it usually happens in production, in the weeks before 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 break? Deviations accumulated over several months cannot be caught up on in two weeks. The data shows where deviations occur and how large they are, long before they become a June crisis.

What losses do we have in our processes, and do we have a plan to address them for the coming year? This is the core question. A factory that systematically measures, analyzes, 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 in the same direction: 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 the whole time. It became available after the losses were visualized and eliminated.

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

Good Solutions' platform is built to drive improvement work based on facts, and that is exactly what a fast startup requires. The loss analysis shows, before the holidays, which losses can be addressed during a potential summer shutdown. Dashboards and timeline provide daily management with real-time facts during 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 toward.

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 skills 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 gathers decision-makers and key personnel for a half-day to define and document what is measured and how, which is the foundation for planning, sales, and production to work towards the same capacity figures.

The pattern among successful factories is the same: startup goes fast when losses are known, capacity is measured, and the first weeks are managed by facts.

See more examples of results from many different factories here.

FAQ

How long should a post-holiday startup take? With prepared measures, verified data quality, and daily management of facts, production should be back to normal pace within a few days to a week. If startup consistently takes all of August, it is a sign that the root causes of the problems have not been addressed.

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

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

2. Prioritize holiday shutdown maintenance and improvement efforts based on that list.

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

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 that is the figure that plans and customer promises should be based on until losses have been worked away.

Why is it not enough to just run harder in the weeks after the holidays? Because forcing does not address 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 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 confidence 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 prioritized losses to address first. A structured restart program, like Good Solutions' 5-day Restart Program, provides a clear framework for the process and ensures that data, skills, and working methods come together at the same time.