Runtime | Bottlenecks Made Visible

Apr 20, 2025 6:45:38 PM

Uncovering 24% downtime by identifying process bottlenecks in real-time.

"We've always collected a lot of data but it was fragmented, historical, and access was limited. With a couple of iPads and the Runtime app, we now get real-time insights across our production lines, allowing us to react faster, drive technician attention to productivity, and minimize downtime."

Mike Vallender

Sr. Director, Kindeva Drug Delivery

Who: Kindeva Drug Delivery
A pharmaceutical manufacturer delivering advanced drug-device combination products for global customers.

What: Runtime
A lightweight, real-time visibility tool for production teams to track and respond to downtime events as they happen.

Why: Performance & Productivity
Uncovering leading causes of downtime to drive up production, inform staffing decisions, and reduce waste.

The Deployment

Before: Roughly 70% of Kindeva’s manufacturing facility was automated — and running efficiently. But the remaining 30%, focused on people-led tasks like thermoforming and packaging, had become a persistent bottleneck.

The root problem? Downtime tracking was done manually. If a machine stopped or materials ran out, a team lead would jot the event down on a clipboard. At the end of the week, someone would transcribe that paper into Excel. That spreadsheet got reviewed the following Monday, by which point any window to fix the issue was long gone. Whole shifts could be lost before leadership even knew there was a problem.

After: Tendrel deployed Runtime — same process, just digitized. The team used iPads they had on hand to download the app and logged downtime events the same way they always had — but now in real time.

No new workflows, no training delays. Just better tools.

The result? Every downtime event instantly surfaced to dynamic, easy-to-read dashboards. Shift leads could spot and solve problems as they happened, instead of days later. And on the back end, operations leaders could now analyze downtime trends to understand root causes — and make smarter calls about staffing, shift setup, automation investment, and labor allocation.

The Results

Runtime gave Kindeva visibility into a blind spot that had been costing them real output. Within weeks, the team uncovered that 24% of their available time in this manual zone was lost to downtime — previously invisible in spreadsheets and siloed paper logs.

Now that time is being actively reclaimed — through:

Real-time intervention by shift leads to resolve issues faster
Data-backed decision making for operations leadership
Improved labor efficiency by understanding shift-by-shift productivity
Greater confidence in hitting production targets and fulfilling customer contracts

All of this directly supports Kindeva’s top strategic priority: ramping up production to meet growing demand. Runtime didn’t just make work easier — it made more of the work count.

What's Next

Runtime is expanding to other zones of the facility and informing long-term decisions around automation and capacity planning. What started as a tablet on a cart has turned into a critical lever for increasing throughput and aligning factory execution to business goals.

Learn more about Runtime here.

Tags: Case Study