The context
In an industrial business with configurable products, Michael experienced an early 80/20 transformation from the operating side of the table. This was before Sift & Winn's consulting work, not an S&W client engagement.
The challenge
The initial segmentation defined every configurable SKU as a separate product. That level was too granular to enable useful operating simplification. A second attempt grouped products too broadly, concealing manufacturing distinctions that still mattered. The product definition undermined the decisions the analysis was meant to support.
The work
- Michael established two conditions for a decision-useful product definition: it had to reflect real production complexity that operations could simplify, and it had to be understandable to customers receiving differentiated treatment.
- With a definition that met both tests, commercial and operations teams aligned on which products deserved priority and which did not.
- Operations established dedicated manufacturing cells for the priority products. Commercial teams understood more clearly which products were most readily available and could communicate that to customers.
What changed.
In two months, on-time delivery for the products assigned to dedicated manufacturing cells improved from 50% to 98%. This result applies to those products, not the entire business. The new definition helped establish priorities; subsequent operating changes also contributed to the delivery improvement.
The commercial team faced fewer surprises about product availability and less customer frustration around late orders.
What we changed for the next business
That experience shaped Sift & Winn's Segment phase. Structured discovery now guides client teams to agree on meaningful product definitions before running the initial analysis, examining both operating complexity and the customer implications of treating products differently.
At a later apparel distributor, shirt sizes had individual SKUs, but resources were deployed by design. In the first discovery round, before the analysis, we guided the team to agree on design-level product segmentation rather than treating each shirt-size SKU as a distinct product.
The aim is to reach a sound definition in the first round instead of discovering after repeated analyses that the original unit of measurement was wrong. The client learns the reasoning and owns the decision, rather than receiving an unexplained classification.