“It’s just that, with our volume down, it seemed that the supervisor’s role could be covered by one of our managers,” Rene defended.

“For that matter,” I replied, “your production roles are simple enough, couldn’t the manager step in and cover those as well?”

Rene laughed. “We joked about that, but you don’t save any money by laying off a production person. You save more by laying off the supervisor.”

“And how much are you saving, now, running your manager in a supervisor’s role and letting your systems go to hell in a handbasket?”

The smile left Rene’s face. “I know, I know. We haven’t counted up what this is costing us, but with the over-runs and under-runs, and customers on backorder, I figure it took us two weeks to lose back what we may have saved in the last 18 months.”