Why ROI Gets Overlooked in Daily Operations
Return on investment (ROI) should be one of the simplest business measures. Yet in aerospace and defense, it often feels elusive. Leaders recognize that inefficiency runs through daily operations, but the way it shows up makes it hard to capture. Time can disappear in fragments, like an engineer rechecking a drawing, a planner approving work with yesterday’s data, or a quality manager waiting for a report that arrives overnight. Each piece seems minor on its own, but together they drain resources and capacity.
These inefficiencies linger because they’ve become part of the culture of execution. Teams create workarounds to keep production moving. Over time, those workarounds harden into an accepted process. Tools stay in place long after their usefulness fades, since no single step feels like the tipping point. ROI often goes overlooked when the costs of waste are dispersed and disguised as routine.
A Simple Way to Measure Return
Demonstrating ROI doesn’t require months of analysis. A straightforward calculation reveals the scale of waste: the number of people involved multiplied by the time lost, multiplied by the blended cost per hour. Walking through the process and asking how long each step takes often surfaces surprising answers. Adding those minutes across dozens of people turns “only a little extra time” into a significant expense.
Here is a simple example from a real customer. The customer has an MES system, but the work instructions are provided to the floor on paper. Our team was examining the process of printing the work instruction “books” – simply locating the most recent file, executing a print, putting holes in the paper, and putting it in a binder. Actual touch time was about 3.5 minutes for this task. In 2024, the site issued 35,301 books to the floor.
- Total Time Cost: (3.5 min x 35,301 books) ÷ 60 min/hr = 2,059 Hours
- The average productive time for an employee is approximately 70% of the total time, including time off and overhead hours. So, the site uses 1.4 man-years of productive time to print and bind paper.
- Multiply this by the overhead-burdened rate for the site, and ROI begins to take shape.
Extending the thread of waste, you then consider:
- Cost of paper and toner
- Cost to store work instructions with data collections
- Retrieval cost from storage locations
- Employee safety and ergonomics of lifting large boxes of paper
- Loss of statistical process control capability
This kind of calculation works because it grounds the conversation in what people see every day. Leaders and teams can point to hours and dollars tied directly to familiar tasks. Approvals that always pass, system reconciliations that no one trusts, or reports that arrive too late all carry a measurable cost. Once the calculation is in writing, the impact of inefficiency becomes hard to ignore.
Start With the Actual Work
I believe the fastest way to uncover ROI opportunities is to watch how the work unfolds. Walk with the team that owns the process, follow it from start to finish, and note where people have to stop. Pay attention to the pauses created by unclear data or disconnected systems. What looks like a minor delay often ripples outward to slow entire programs.
Asking questions during these observations often exposes steps that don’t add customer value. In my experience, teams can usually identify actions they perform simply to bridge gaps between tools or satisfy reporting rules. These steps exist to patch holes in the structure rather than to advance production. Once documented, they become clear starting points for continuous improvement.
What Waste Looks Like in Real Life
The same themes show up repeatedly across programs. Quality groups wait for overnight SPC reports while flawed parts continue down the line. Planners approve work based on data that’s already outdated because integrations only run once a day. Engineers repeat tasks when version control feels unreliable. Someone is swivel-chairing between systems or using Excel because “this is the way it’s always been done” or “this is what the policy says.” These issues aren’t occasional. They repeat, accumulate, and carry ongoing costs.
The impact stretches beyond the teams directly involved. A quality delay forces production rework. An outdated plan disrupts procurement. A design team that lacks trust in data adds checks that slow the shop floor. Each inefficiency radiates outward until the cost becomes structural. Real-world examples like these move ROI out of the abstract and into the daily rhythm of work.
What Changes When Execution Systems Integrate
Connecting execution data through a digital thread changes the pattern. Approvals move at the right moment, rather than stacking up in queues. Quality issues surface during production rather than after a full run has left the floor. Engineers and planners’ data sets have a tight relationship, reducing the need for duplication and rework. The difference shows up in time saved and errors avoided.
At iBase-t, we base every implementation on three core tenets:
- A team member should have a work environment where every necessary piece of information is available at their fingertips, NO-MORE, NO-LESS
- Data should only be entered ONCE
- All data collected should be validated in REAL-TIME
It’s always important to leverage the core functionality from the pieces of the “Golden Triangle” (ERP, MES, and PLM) to be productive and successful. When engineering, quality, and production work are tightly integrated, information moves with the process instead of through manual handoffs. Teams spend less time reconciling data or acting as messengers between tools, and more time focusing on the technical challenges that matter.
When to Expect ROI to Show Up
The return on these improvements often appears quickly. Labor hours fall as duplicate steps are eliminated from the process. Rework decreases once decisions rely on accurate data. Audit preparation requires less effort since records are captured as part of execution. These results are apparent within weeks or months rather than years. It is critical to track these improvements and report out on them so that your teams’ ROI calculations gain credibility, making the conversation about more investment in continuous improvement easier.
Longer-term gains build on these immediate returns. As processes stabilize, delivery schedules tighten, customer trust strengthens, and capacity opens up for new programs. ROI continues to grow as execution systems eliminate waste. What starts with hours saved becomes a structural shift in performance.
Where Solumina Helps Teams Capture This Value
Solumina provides the backbone that allows organizations to make ROI visible. It consolidates scattered tools into a system specifically designed for aerospace and defense. The system captures data as it happens, creating a reliable source of truth that supports timely decisions. Standardized quality and traceability give teams the confidence to act without delay.
By embedding compliance and quality into the daily flow of work, Solumina turns waste into measurable savings. Manual checks fade, approvals move on time, and handoffs between functions become less risky. The ROI is evident in the efficiency of operations and the assurance leaders gain when performance stays consistent with expectations.
From Measurement to Momentum
ROI from execution change is real, measurable, and close at hand. It lives in the hours teams save, in the errors they prevent, and in the stronger performance they achieve when systems carry the burden of traceability. Leaders who begin by observing where time is lost create a clear starting point for improvement, and fixing those points produces results quickly.
With the right execution systems in place, each gain builds on the last. ROI compounds, strengthening performance today while creating capacity for tomorrow.
