From Operational Losses to Measurable Results: The Development of OLMS

Born and raised in the Dominican Republic, this Industrial Engineer and Manufacturing Operations Leader has built more than sixteen years of progressive experience on a simple but powerful conviction: that operational losses, even when difficult to see, can often be identified, quantified, prioritized, and addressed through structured improvement.

Rising from process engineering roles to Production Manager, Ulloa has spent his career at the operational level of manufacturing performance, driving productivity, workforce utilisation, and cost reduction across multidisciplinary teams. His professional experience includes documented savings, efficiency improvements, and process gains achieved through structured operational improvement initiatives across demanding production environments.

It is this depth of hands-on experience that led Ulloa to develop the Operational Loss Mapping System (OLMS), a structured methodology for identifying, quantifying, prioritising, and eliminating operational losses. OLMS brings together industrial engineering, Lean Manufacturing, operational diagnosis, performance measurement, workforce development, and standardisation into a single, repeatable framework for transformation — a methodology shaped by years of practical experience and progressively refined through real manufacturing environments.

Today, as Production Manager at Wacoal Dominicana, Ulloa leads manufacturing operations across production, warehouse, and logistics — translating operational data into practical improvement initiatives and sustainable manufacturing capabilities. For a business audience seeking to understand how real operational transformation is achieved, His experience provides a practical perspective on how structured operational improvement can translate data and observations into measurable results.

Interview Questions

You've spent over sixteen years moving from process engineering into senior production leadership. What has that journey taught you about the difference between fixing problems and truly transforming operations?

Over the course of my career, I have learned that fixing a problem and transforming an operation are not necessarily the same thing.

Fixing a problem often means addressing an immediate symptom: correcting a machine issue, adjusting a work method, recovering lost production, or responding to a quality problem. Those actions can be necessary, but they do not always change the conditions that allowed the problem to occur.

Operational transformation requires a broader view. It means understanding how people, processes, equipment, materials, information, quality requirements, and management systems interact, identifying where operational losses occur, determining their causes and impact, and then prioritizing the opportunities that can produce meaningful and sustainable results.

My progression from process engineering into production leadership reinforced this perspective. As my responsibilities expanded, I became increasingly aware that improvements cannot remain isolated within one process or department. Production, engineering, quality, maintenance, planning, warehouse, logistics, supervisors, and frontline employees all influence operational performance.

That experience ultimately shaped the way I approach improvement today: understand the operation first, identify and quantify the losses, determine where the greatest impact exists, and then select the appropriate intervention.

Can you walk us through how the Operational Loss Mapping System (OLMS) came about, and what gap in traditional Lean Manufacturing approaches you felt it needed to close?

OLMS did not emerge from the idea that Lean Manufacturing was insufficient. Rather, it developed from my experience applying Lean and Industrial Engineering principles in real manufacturing environments and recognizing the importance of determining where those tools should be applied first.

Throughout my career, I have worked with different types of operational challenges involving productivity, labor utilization, equipment performance, material consumption, quality, process flow, and cost. I found that the effectiveness of an improvement initiative often depends not only on the tool selected, but on whether the organization has correctly identified the operational loss that should be addressed.

This led me to progressively develop a more structured way of looking at operations: first understanding the current condition, then identifying and quantifying losses, analyzing their causes and impact, prioritizing improvement opportunities, and only then determining which Industrial Engineering or Lean tools are appropriate.

I later formalized this approach as the Operational Loss Mapping System, or OLMS.

That distinction is important because two factories may use the same Lean tools but face very different operational conditions, constraints, and priorities.

OLMS integrates industrial engineering, Lean principles, performance measurement, and workforce development into one framework. How do you get buy-in from teams across such different functions — production, quality, maintenance, planning, logistics — to work from the same playbook?

The starting point is to avoid presenting improvement as the responsibility of one department. Operational losses usually cross functional boundaries, so the improvement process must do the same.

I begin by establishing a common understanding of the current condition using operational data and direct observation. When people from different functions can see the same problem, understand its impact, and recognize how their area contributes to it, the conversation becomes less about assigning responsibility and more about solving the problem.

I also believe that frontline employees have essential knowledge about how processes operate. Supervisors, operators, technicians, planners, quality personnel, and other team members often see sources of loss that are not visible in reports alone.

From there, I use measurable objectives and clear responsibilities. The team needs to understand what we are trying to improve, how success will be measured, and how each function contributes.

This approach has been particularly important in my own projects, where improvement initiatives have involved production, engineering, quality, maintenance, supervision, technicians, and operators working together around specific operational problems.

Ultimately, the goal is not to get everyone to use the same tools. It is to get everyone to work from the same understanding of the problem and the same measurable objective.

What is one of the most significant manufacturing improvement projects that helped shape OLMS, and what did the results mean for the business in real terms?

One of the most significant examples that contributed to the development of OLMS was a manufacturing improvement project I led as part of my Lean Bronze certification.

The project involved a production process where we identified significant opportunities involving cycle time, productivity, efficiency, quality, workforce utilization, and process organization.

Over approximately ten months, the project team analyzed the process using time studies, line balancing, Yamazumi analysis, Standard Work, value-stream analysis, visual management, root-cause analysis, and direct workforce participation.

What was most important to me, however, was not any individual number. The project reinforced a principle that became central to OLMS: improvement begins by understanding where operational losses exist, quantifying their impact, and then directing resources toward the opportunities with the greatest potential effect.

Those experiences, together with other manufacturing improvement projects throughout my career, provided the practical foundation from which I later formalized OLMS.

As Production Manager at Wacoal Dominicana, you oversee a wide span of functions. What does a typical week look like for you, and how do you decide where to focus improvement efforts first?

No two weeks are the same, but my role generally involves balancing daily production requirements with longer-term operational improvement. I work across production, warehouse and logistics, while monitoring performance indicators, production requirements, costs, workforce needs, and operational constraints.

A typical week can include reviewing production and KPI performance, addressing operational issues, evaluating capacity and resource requirements, working with department leaders on improvement opportunities, reviewing costs, and following up on initiatives that affect productivity, quality, flow, or delivery.

When deciding where to focus first, I try not to rely solely on the issue that is most visible or urgent. I look at the magnitude of the loss, its frequency, its impact on productivity or cost, its effect on quality or delivery, and the organization's ability to address it. This helps distinguish an immediate operational issue from an improvement opportunity that may have broader and longer-term impact.

That allows improvement efforts to be prioritized based on evidence rather than simply reacting to the loudest problem of the day.

For other manufacturing leaders looking to build a genuine culture of continuous improvement rather than a one-off initiative, what's the single piece of advice you'd give them?

Make improvement part of the way the organization operates, rather than treating it as a separate project.

Continuous improvement becomes sustainable when people understand the purpose of the improvement, participate in identifying problems, have access to meaningful performance information, and can see that improvements are followed by standardization and continued measurement.

Leaders also need to recognize that culture is built through consistent behavior. If an organization identifies a problem, implements a solution, and then stops measuring it, the improvement may not last. The same applies if frontline employees are expected to follow new methods without understanding why those methods matter.

In my experience, sustainable improvement requires three things to work together: measurable performance, workforce involvement, and management discipline.

When those elements become part of the normal operating system, continuous improvement stops being a one-time initiative and becomes part of how the organization learns and performs.