Operations · 2026-09-08
The quiet cost of handoffs
Every time work changes hands, it waits. Most firms measure the work and ignore the waiting.
Ask any plant manager where time goes and they will point at a machine. Follow a single job through the building and a different picture appears: the machine is busy for an hour, and the job waits for three days.
Handoffs are where the waiting hides. Each one feels small — an approval, a batch that has to fill up, a report that runs on Mondays. Together, they are usually the largest cost nobody measures.
Handoffs are where the waiting hides. Each one feels small — an approval, a batch that has to fill up, a report that runs on Mondays. Together, they are usually the largest cost nobody measures.
“The machine is busy for an hour. The job waits for three days.”
Try this
A fifteen-minute exercise
Start by counting. Pick one typical order and write down every time it changes hands. Most teams we work with guess five; the real number is usually between nine and fourteen.
Then ask of each handoff: what would happen if it disappeared? About a third exist for reasons that stopped being true years ago. Removing them costs nothing and returns days.