Eye-tracking operational audit across production, warehousing, and pallet logistics
Food-mix manufacturing plant with an integrated production line, raw-material warehousing, pallet logistics, and food-mix batch production.
Confidential case study — anonymized. Full details available under NDA upon request.
Operators across all 4 workflows observed live with eye-tracking glasses — full process recordings and visual-attention data per workflow.
Per-workflow diagnostics plus cross-workflow pattern analysis, separating individual behavior from shared structural causes.
Recommendations sequenced into Quick Wins (weeks 1–4), Medium-Term (months 1–6), and Long-Term (months 6–18), each tied to a workflow and an expected impact.
| Objective Finding | Measured Value |
|---|---|
| Non-productive time share, consistent across all 4 analyzed workflows | ≈ 15–20% per shift |
| Time to visually identify a single raw-material item on the floor (observed instance) | 6 minutes |
| Structural root causes shared across all 4 workflows | 3 — spatial disorganization, 5S deficit, absent SOPs — present in 100% of workflows analyzed |
| Estimated yield improvement potential, production line | +15–20% |
| Estimated collection-rate improvement potential, raw-material collection | +18–22% |
| Estimated cycle-time reduction potential, pallet identification & placement | +20–28% |
| Estimated batch-efficiency improvement potential, food-mix production | +12–18% |
| Recommendation | Rationale / Expected Impact |
|---|---|
| Delimit floor zones (collection, storage, forklift lanes, pedestrian corridors) with alphanumeric aisle/position codes | Quick win (wks 1–4). Directly targets the spatial-disorganization cause found in all 4 workflows |
| Large shelf and pallet labels visible from rack height and forklift cabin, with scannable barcodes | Quick win (wks 1–4). Removes the floor-wide searching behind the 6-minute identification time |
| Batch-registration form + weighing-tolerance guide posted above the scale | Quick win (wks 1–4), zero cost. Immediate quality-control impact in food-mix production |
| Redesign the HMI control panel — 5 core functions on the home screen, color-coded status indicators | Medium-term (mo. 1–6). Reduces the multi-step navigation flagged on the production line |
| ABC slotting by turnover velocity + warehouse layout redesign | Medium-term (mo. 1–6). Targets a 15–20% reduction in travel distance per shift |
| Full WMS integration — automated routing, real-time inventory, pick-path optimization | Long-term (mo. 6–18). Sustains the collection-rate gain beyond the pilot phase |
| Predictive IoT maintenance on production equipment | Long-term (mo. 6–18). Targets a 10–20% reduction in unplanned downtime |
| ISO 22000 / HACCP alignment, digital recipe screen, and batch-tracking system | Long-term (mo. 6–18). Builds a full audit trail on top of the new batch-registration discipline |
All four workflows analyzed — despite covering different tasks, different equipment, and different teams — surfaced the same three root causes: no spatial organization, no 5S discipline, and no SOPs at the workstation. That pattern is the finding itself: these were not individual performance problems, they were structural gaps in the process design, repeated four times. Recommendations were sequenced by timeframe precisely because the causes were structural — floor markings and labels can be fixed in weeks; WMS integration and predictive maintenance take longer, but compound on the same root fix.