The situation
Move production, keep the customer supplied
When production has to move — to another site, consolidated onto fewer, or brought back in-house — the machines are the easy part. The real work is keeping the customer supplied through the change. That is what I lead: the transfer end to end, with delivery secured throughout, whether it lands on one receiving site or several.
A move is a customer problem before it’s a logistics problem
To consolidate a footprint, exit a site, shift volume to another plant or bring outsourced work back home, production has to keep running while it is dismantled, moved, reinstalled and re-qualified somewhere else. Get the sequencing or the buffers wrong and the customer feels it first.
I take operational charge of the whole transfer — the plan and timeline, the receiving side, and the customer-continuity that has to hold throughout. On the union and workforce side I work alongside HR: I bring the operational plan and the delivery continuity, not the labour-law lead. The work runs from the floor and connects straight up to the board decision, so the move lands without a gap the customer can see. I stay hands-on at each receiving plant through installation, commissioning and ramp-up to verified performance, not at the contractual handover line. I have led transfers and closures like this several times, from different chairs — operations manager, plant director and board director.
What I own
- The board case, the plan and the sequencing
- Buffer strategy so deliveries never stop
- The union/MBL and workforce track, alongside HR
- Competence transfer and re-start at the receiving side
Over roughly 18 months I held overall responsibility for the closure and cross-European transfer of a 150+-person site’s entire production to five receiving factories in four countries — with customer deliveries protected the whole way through.
The method
How I run a move, end to end
Every move is different; the method isn’t. This is the sequence I have run through two full cross-European transfer programmes — the same spine whether it’s a single line or a whole site. It is also, deliberately, a working checklist.
Feasibility and the board case
One decision-grade case that is honest about both sides — what can be fixed and what can’t — with the cost, the savings and the payback laid out. I have presented this from the board seat myself.
Done when the board or steering group has voted to proceed.
Governance and sequencing
Turn the decision into a running operating system before day one: parallel work-streams for customer, people, industrial, facilities and finance, a weekly go/no-go cadence, and one status format everyone reports on.
Done when the transfer is contracted, the streams are staffed and the weekly rhythm is live.
People and risk, first
Protect the workforce and the critical skills before anyone else is told: who is at risk, who we cannot afford to lose, and the retention and transition designed with HR — including bonus terms that give people a reason to stay and deliver to the last day.
Done when critical roles have cover plans and the retention framework is agreed.
The announcement
Announce once, in the right order, with no leaks: board, union, then the people face to face, then customers and suppliers — most of it the same day. I have delivered that message to a full workforce myself.
Done when every group has been told before the next, and nothing has leaked.
Protect the customer
Guarantee deliveries through the move: buffer stock for stocked items, planned lead-time for made-to-order, weekend transfers where no production day can be lost. Zero lost deliveries is written in as a formal success factor, not a hope.
Done when the buffer plan is built and customer continuity is tracking green.
The physical move
Execute site by site, one go/no-go gate at a time — and re-engineer the bottleneck on the way rather than just moving it, ranking every option by the cost per unit of capacity it buys.
Done when each wave has passed its gate and capacity is restored to plan.
Commission and re-qualify
Make the receiving site perform to the same standard, measured the same way: operators run in parallel across sites during cutover, and the tracking method travels with the work so both ends measure identically.
Done when the receiving site is producing to spec on the same method.
Ramp-up to verified performance, then hand over
Stay accountable until the number is real — not until the contract line says handover — then pass a running operation to the people who own it, with a structured close-out.
Done when verified performance holds and the handover is clean.
Across all eight steps, two things never move: deliveries stay protected, and safety and quality are held to target — the two things a customer and a workforce feel first.
Nothing moves alone
Every function moves together
A move only holds if every function moves with it. Here is what I coordinate, function by function — the checklist behind the plan.
Safety
- Safety and environment run as their own workstream
- De-install and machine-removal risk assessed before anything is lifted
- Safety kept as the first KPI through the transition
Quality
- Product qualification and certification re-established at the receiving site
- Quality KPIs tracked unbroken through the move
- Mistake-proofing carried across with the line
Production
- Wave-by-wave sequencing with a go/no-go at every step
- Operators run in parallel across sites during cutover
- Daily output tracked and restored to plan
Engineering
- Every line assessed for transferability
- Options ranked by cost per unit of capacity gained
- Tooling, machines and receiving-site layout re-industrialised
Maintenance
- Equipment relocated and restored to valid condition
- Spare-parts stock split and moved with the machines
- Tool-room capability stood up at the receiving end
Supply chain
- Buffer stock sized by product type and built to plan
- Order points and MOQs re-dimensioned for the switchover
- Purchase-order cutover so nothing is ordered at the wrong moment
Finance
- The business case owned from first estimate to close
- Asset and stock valuation rules for what transfers
- Capex ranked by the capacity it buys
HR & people
- Critical roles mapped, retention and transition designed
- The MBL/union process supported alongside HR — not led by me
- The all-employee communication owned and delivered
Customer
- A dedicated customer workstream with weekly cadence
- Zero lost deliveries written in as a formal success factor
- Top accounts called personally on announcement day
One site or several
Whichever direction yours runs
A move can go to a single receiving site or several, and work can come home as easily as it goes out. I have led it in each of these directions. And when the sending site is closing entirely, the ending itself — the people, the announcement, the last day — is its own discipline: factory closure.
A line to a single plant
A product line and its dedicated machinery moved to one receiving factory, with a formal, staged competence handover — led the whole way through.
A site fanned out
A full-site closure with production split across five factories in four countries, deliveries protected throughout the transfer.
Insourcing that strengthens
Outsourced or supplier-held work brought back onto your own floor — qualified in-house and invested in, to build the plant up rather than shrink it.
Common questions
Moving a factory, answered
How do you keep customers supplied through a move?
You protect customers with method, not luck: build buffer stock ahead of the move, convert make-to-order lines to make-to-stock, keep customers informed, and transfer the competence together with the equipment. I can promise the governance and the experience, not a blanket guarantee of zero disruption — which would be dishonest. Done this way, a 150+-person site’s entire production was transferred to five factories in four countries with deliveries protected throughout.
What if it is only one line, or a single receiving site?
The method is the same at any size. I have led a single product line and its dedicated machinery moved to one receiving plant, with a formal competence handover, and I have led a whole site fanned out to five factories in four countries. One line to one site, or one site to several — the sequence, the buffer logic and the customer discipline do not change.
Is insourcing — bringing work back in-house — part of this?
Yes. Bringing outsourced or supplier-held work back onto your own floor is the same discipline pointed the other way: qualify the process in-house, size the buffer through the switchover, and protect delivery while volume moves. I have insourced production from a supplier and invested in the equipment to run it — to strengthen a plant rather than shrink it.
How long does a production transfer take?
It depends entirely on the case — the machines and process complexity, the number of SKUs and the stocking policy, and how many customers depend on the line. There is no generic timeline; I scope it honestly upfront and protect delivery throughout, whatever the duration. Restoring full output on a receiving site typically takes a few weeks once the equipment is in — but the preparation before the move, not the move itself, is where the risk is won or lost.
Do you stay through the whole move, or hand it over?
I own the decision, negotiation and preparation phases and stay hands-on at each receiving plant through installation, commissioning and ramp-up to verified performance — the hardest parts. Once everything is decided, negotiated and running, a dedicated execution manager can carry the final logistics tail.
Related situations: Factory closure · Insourcing & reshoringAll services · About Soheil
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Facing a move, a consolidation or an insourcing?
If you are planning a relocation, consolidation, transfer or insourcing and need the customer kept supplied while it happens, let’s have a conversation. Fifteen minutes is usually enough to see whether I can help.
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