Caldwell Manufacturing is a regional industrial components manufacturer based in Ohio with approximately 180 employees and $45M in annual revenue. A decade of steady growth had outpaced the company's fulfillment operation, leaving the team managing rising order volumes with processes built for a much smaller business. Delays were mounting, visibility was limited and the operations team had shifted from running the floor to fighting fires.
Challenge
Caldwell Manufacturing had grown steadily for ten years, but its fulfillment operation hadn't kept pace. Order volume had doubled since 2018, but the processes managing that volume were largely unchanged. Delays were common, handoffs between departments were inconsistent and nobody had clear visibility into where an order stood at any given moment.
By the time Caldwell engaged Meridian, average order-to-ship time had climbed to 18 days — well above the industry benchmark of 10 to 12. Customer complaints were increasing and the operations team was spending more time firefighting than running the floor.
Approach
Meridian began with a two-week operations audit, interviewing department leads, mapping the existing fulfillment workflow and identifying where delays were compounding. Three root causes emerged: a lack of standardized handoff procedures between production and shipping, no real-time visibility into order status across departments and an inventory management process that created bottlenecks at the pick-and-pack stage.
From there, Meridian designed a revised fulfillment workflow, built a standardized handoff protocol and implemented a shared order tracking system accessible to every team involved in the process. A new inventory cadence reduced pick-and-pack bottlenecks by eliminating the most common causes of stockout delays.
The final deliverable — The Growth Playbook — documented every new process, assigned clear ownership and provided a 12-month roadmap for continued improvement.
Results
Within 90 days, average order-to-ship time dropped from 18 days to 11. Fulfillment delays fell by 40% and customer complaint volume related to late orders decreased by more than half. The operations team, freed from constant firefighting, redirected its capacity toward proactive planning for the first time in years.
