// EMBEDDED_OPERATIONS · FOR_MANUFACTURERS
Embedded operations: a temp agency alternative, priced per unit.
Productiv puts a team of our own trained operators — supervisors, line leads, and operators — inside your plant and runs the line. You pay for the units that come off it, not for the hours someone showed up.
- operators across the company
- 1,200+
- operators across the company
- operations sites, 9 of them inside client plants
- 14
- operations sites, 9 of them inside client plants
- average tenure of leads and supervisors
- 10+ yrs
- average tenure of leads and supervisors
// SOUND_FAMILIAR
The agency model works until the work is permanent.
Temp agencies are built for a two-week surge. Most plants use them for base workload — skilled roles, standing shifts, positions that are effectively permanent. That is where the model starts costing more than it saves.
You're paying an agency markup on roles you fill every single week.
Turnover resets training every month, and the line never reaches its rate.
Monday's output is decided by who shows up, not by the plan.
Your supervisors spend the shift managing someone else's workers.
// THE_MODEL
You keep the plant. We run the line.
Embedded operations is not staff augmentation. A Productiv team deploys inside your facility with its own supervision, process engineering, and accountability for output. Your floor runs as if the team had always been there — and when a target is missed, fixing it is our job.
Productiv owns
- Recruiting, hiring, and retention of our own trained team
- Supervisors and line leads on your floor, every shift
- Throughput, quality, and the SLA on the line
- Process engineering and continuous improvement while the work runs
You keep
- The building, the equipment, and the product
- Your production plan and your systems
- A single number per unit instead of an hourly bill
- Leadership time for the plant, not for the temp roster
Full walkthrough, from site assessment to go-live: how embedded operations works.
Turnover is a cost you pay by the hour.
Every departure restarts recruiting, onboarding, and the weeks it takes a new operator to reach rate. Under an agency, all of that is billed to you at the full rate while the line runs slow. Under an embedded team, the churn is ours to carry — and tenured leads keep the crew stable.
Put your own numbers in the turnover calculatorThe markup is on every hour — including the ones that produce nothing.
An agency earns the same margin whether your line runs at 60% or 90%. Training hours, no-show replacements, the slow first week — all marked up, none of it tied to output. Per-unit pricing flips the incentive: Productiv earns more only by running the line more efficiently.
The alternative to temp staffing isn't more temps.
Between hiring everyone yourself and living with the agency roster, there is a third option: an operator that brings its own trained team and owns the result. Hours versus output, side by side.
Embedded operations vs. temp agenciesWhat changes over the first year
With an agency roster
- Supervisors manage attendance instead of the process
- Labor cost scales with headcount, not output
- Improvement waits for a quiet week that never comes
- Every peak is a hiring scramble
With an embedded team
- The line runs without escalation to plant leadership
- Cost per unit is a known number that stabilizes or falls
- Process changes happen while the work is live
- Volume swings are absorbed by a team that flexes up and down
// RESULTS
What changes after the team is in.
Results from embedded programs, then plant leaders in their own words. Named clients are quoted word for word. Where a client isn't cleared to be named, we say so rather than dress it up.
Paper goods repack program
35% lower labor costs
Repackaging paper goods for retail: more than 3 million cases a year across 300 unique SKUs, priced per unit and run on lean-engineered workflows. Labor costs fell 35%.
A medical device manufacturer
Overtime cut to zero
We tracked line downtime to its root cause, missing components, then moved upstream to run picking as well as kitting. Stoppages fell, throughput stabilized, and the plant's overtime went to zero.
Fareva
10-point efficiency gain
One underperforming shift, one crew built around discipline, the rules of the building, and understanding the job on the floor. Efficiency rose 10 points.
A global tobacco manufacturer
Raw materials to finished goods
We run the raw-materials warehouse, ship materials into the factory, handle internal material movement, and operate finished-goods distribution, on a WMS we implemented and integrated with SAP.
A global consumer goods manufacturer
The whole building, regulated
Full facility operations for a tax-sensitive product: staffing the entire building, returns, repack, product dispositions, documentation, and tax recovery processes.
Safeguard Medical
Set the process once
Material goes in, product is packed out and turned around, with minimal involvement from the client's team after the initial ramp.
“We had a shift that was inefficient from a people perspective. We got together with Productiv and put a crew together as an experiment focused around discipline, the rules in the building, and understanding the job on the floor. With just that, we had a 10 point uptick in efficiency.”
“When we set the process, it just works. We send in the material. It gets packed out, turned around to us. So there's minimal interaction that we have to do.”
“If I told Productiv I needed 20 people in three weeks, I guarantee they'd have 20 people in three weeks.”
// WORKFORCE
Our own trained operators — not temp labor. Line leads, supervisors, and site managers average 10+ years of tenure.
// WHERE_WE_RUN_TEAMS
9 embedded operations inside client facilities across Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and Utah.
Teams deploy into your plant, so the model is not limited to these metros. New sites start with a site walk, and we stand up fastest where we already have management and recruiting on the ground.
Richmond
4 embedded operations
Clean-room kitting and contract-manufacturing line support
Raleigh
3 embedded operations
Kitting, assembly, packaging, and material handling inside client plants
Dallas–Fort Worth
1 embedded operation
Production and packaging teams inside a client facility
Salt Lake City
1 embedded operation
Dedicated team running a client's production and packaging work
Charlotte
Teams deploy into your plant
Serving manufacturers across the Carolinas
// THE_MATH_BEHIND_IT
The cost-per-unit playbook this model is built on.
Output Over Hours, by Productiv CFO and co-owner Paul Baker, walks the labor economics: why hourly and cost-plus contracts cap your throughput, how to derive cost per unit from the data you already have, and the operating system that makes output-based labor stick.
Read the book// FAQ
Common questions from plant and operations leaders
// TALK_TO_AN_OPERATOR
Start with a site walk.
Tell us about the line, the shifts, and what the agency bill looks like today. An operator — not a sales queue — replies within 24 hours, and we schedule a call that fits your timeline.
- • Headcount and shifts the agency covers today
- • Your agency bill rate and roughly how often roles turn over
- • The work itself: kitting, assembly, packaging, line feeding, inspection