Pilot Payback Calculator

Your plant in six numbers

Rough numbers work. You can tighten them later.

Plant or company name (optional)

Industry

Headcount

Annual production hours

Two shifts, five days runs near 6,000. Around the clock runs near 8,400.

Cost of one hour of unplanned downtime ($)

Include lost output, idle labor, and expedited freight. Most plants underestimate this.

Fully loaded hourly labor rate ($)

Wages plus benefits plus overhead. $65 is a common mid-market figure.

Pick your top three problems

Three maximum. A pilot that chases six problems fails. Focus wins.

0 of 3 selected.

Where those problems stand today

Only the fields for your three picks show here. Defaults are typical mid-market figures.

Unplanned downtime hours per month

Count full line stops only. Pull it from your last three monthly reports.

Annual material spend ($)

Raw materials and packaging for the year. Your controller has this number.

Current scrap and rework rate (%)

Scrapped plus reworked material as a share of total. 3 to 5% is common.

Annual capital project spend ($)

Total approved capital budget for the year.

Average project overrun (%)

Final cost over approved cost, averaged across recent projects. 12% is the mid-market norm.

Hours per week lost to schedule churn

Time spent rebuilding the schedule after changes, across everyone who touches it.

Hours per week on quote and RFQ review

Reading vendor quotes, comparing scopes, chasing missing line items.

Hours per month writing compliance documents

Procedures, reports, and revisions for PSM, FDA, FSMA, or OSHA.

What the pilot would cost you

Defaults reflect a realistic mid-market pilot. Adjust to your plan.

Monthly AI tool subscriptions $200

Two or three seats of Claude or ChatGPT runs $100 to $300 a month.

One-time setup and training $5,000

Outside help, training time, and template setup.

Internal hours per week during the pilot 5

Your team's time. 4 to 5 hours a week is the honest ceiling for most operations roles.

Weeks before savings start 8

Time to learn the tool and change the routine. 8 weeks is typical.

Your payback, conservative case

18-month kill line

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Annual savings, conservative case

Savings by problem

Send the full report

The rest of your report is ready. It includes:

Three-year cash flow, year by year
NPV at 10% and three-year ROI
Conservative, expected, and aggressive scenarios
30/60/90 kill criteria for each of your three problems
Which tool to test first for each problem
PDF you can hand to your GM

Full report

Three-year cash flow

Year	Savings	Cost	Net	Cumulative

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NPV at a 10% discount rate

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Three-year ROI

Your 30/60/90 kill criteria

Miss a checkpoint, stop the pilot. Walking away early is a win, not a failure.

Why these numbers hold up

Built from plant floors, not pitch decks

30+ years in manufacturing at Eli Lilly, Nestle, Braskem, and Tate & Lyle. The factors come from real project history.

$65M+ in capital projects managed

Overrun rates and ramp times in this model match what capital projects do in practice, not in proposals.

11 AI tools tested against plant work

Every tool recommendation in your report was tested on real downtime logs, quotes, and procedures.

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