Comment by StopDisinfo910

> However, the hardware situation you described sounds very brittle to me.

It is very britlle.

The situation described is what happens when there is significant loss of knowledge, little pressure to improve productivity and low products turnover. You start to fear changing things because you doubt you would be able to get back to the previous situation. That's a huge red flag because you are one unexpected incident/failure away from a very difficult situation.

That's why someone mentioned process knowledge in another thread. If you have mastery of the process required to setup a manufacturing chain, you are far less afraid of changes and that's indeed key to being efficient and innovative.

But the original commenter is also right that volume is key here. If your volumes are so low that short time unavailability or a small amount of failures is life threatening, you simply don't have the breathing room to properly operate.