Fix what the shop floor is costing you.
Procurement and vendor management, incoming and end-of-line quality, cost engineering, inventory, and lean improvements — led by engineers who have stood on machinery floors and traced rework back to the station that caused it.
For a small farm-machinery manufacturer, margin is made or lost on the floor. The tractor implement, power tiller, rotavator, or thresher leaves the gate at a price the market sets — so profit comes from what you pay for steel and castings, how much you rework before dispatch, how fast inventory turns, and whether the line moves without waiting on a late job-work vendor. In most unorganised units, all of that is run on memory and goodwill, and the leakage hides in plain sight.
AgriMachinery Consulting works exclusively with farm-machinery makers, and we treat the shop floor as an engineering problem before a strategy one. Measurement comes before redesign. The vendor base and incoming-quality gate come before the dashboard. Our engineers have stood on machinery floors, qualified casting and forging vendors, and traced warranty returns back to the station that caused them — so the changes we recommend are the changes we would implement ourselves, and ones your team can sustain after we leave.
Engagements range from short on-floor audits — where rework originates, which vendor is failing, which upgrade is worth the spend — to multi-month programmes covering procurement, quality systems, cost engineering, layout, and lean handover.
Six engagements.
- Shop-floor audit
- A short on-floor study — incoming inspection, in-process checks, end-of-line failures, warranty returns, and line balance. Output: rework quantified by station, failure modes mapped, and a priority-sequenced fix list.
- Procurement & vendor management
- Vendor base for steel, castings, forgings, bearings, and job work — sourced, qualified, and dual-supplied. Rate negotiation, incoming-quality gates, and supplier scorecards so late and out-of-spec parts stop reaching your line.
- Quality systems
- Incoming, in-process, and end-of-line inspection designed for a machinery floor — gauges, check sheets, poka-yoke, and a warranty-feedback loop that ties field failures back to the station and the supplier that caused them.
- Cost engineering & value analysis
- Bill-of-materials teardown part by part, over-specified components challenged, design-for-cost on fabricated and bought-out parts, and vendor rationalisation — manufacturing cost reduced without giving up field reliability.
- Inventory & throughput
- Raw material, WIP, and finished-goods inventory rebuilt to free working capital and shorten lead time. Bottleneck stations identified and de-throttled so the line delivers more without new machines or shifts.
- Layout & lean improvement
- Plant layout, material flow, and workstation design reworked to cut motion, handling, and idle time — 5S, standard work, and visual control sized for a small unit that has to run them without a full-time lean team.
Commonly bundled with
Clear answers before the call.
- Small and unorganised units are our core. Most of our clients are owner-run machinery makers — tractor implements, power tillers, rotavators, threshers, seed drills, sprayers — running 20 to 300 people on the floor. We design procurement, quality, and lean improvements they can actually sustain without a corporate engineering department behind them.
- Both, because they are the same problem. Inconsistent castings, late steel, and unvetted job-work vendors show up on the line as rework and missed dispatch. We build the vendor base, qualification, and incoming-quality gates alongside the in-process and end-of-line systems, so the supply side and the shop floor are fixed together.
- We start with measurement. Most small machinery makers know rework is high but not where it originates. Our first phase is a short on-floor audit — incoming inspection, in-process checks, end-of-line failures, and warranty returns mapped back to the station that caused them. Only then do we put in inspection gates and poka-yoke, so you stop paying to fix the wrong stage.
- Yes — through cost engineering and value analysis, not corner-cutting. We tear down the bill of materials part by part, challenge over-specified components, rationalise the vendor base, and remove wasted motion and inventory on the line. The savings come from sourcing, design-for-cost, and throughput, while quality gates hold the field reliability your buyers expect.