This plant was about to go to senior management with a set of capital improvements that were going to cost $9 million. The process people were initially very reluctant to spend any time evaluating the project and wanted to press forward, but management wanted 5DN work with this plant using the SIO approach.
The joint client and 5DN team spent about a week using the SIO approach on this process and identified 88 issues and opportunities and documented 35 solutions with economics. The top 7 were worth $7.6 million in savings with a 4 month payback. After the session, the senior technical process manager said that they should "go through this process every time they invest in the plant." It was high praise from someone considered one of the top technical, yet skeptical minds in a company of over 10,000 employees.