73% Faster With the Same Team | Steve Schroeder on the Invisible Factory Inside Your Business

The Operating System Show · Sep 3, 2026 · 36m

Steve Schroeder has spent almost twenty years finding the delays nobody can see. He calls it the invisible factory. In a plant you can walk the line and watch the widgets pile up at the slow station. In a digital company the same pile ups exist, they are just invisible, sitting in approval queues and handoffs nobody has ever drawn on a wall. His first value stream mapping event ran inside a large telecom during a stalled Agile transformation. They mapped the billing department onto three walls of stickies and cut lead time on new features by 73%. The executive who walked the walls at the end…