The machines are not full, and the orders are still late.

ERP records what happened. Scheduling decides what runs next. MES reports what is running now. None of them answers the question a plant manager asks on a Monday: if we take this order mix, where will work pile up, and what will that do to the dates we promised?

That question is a flow question, and flow behaviour is governed by queueing, not by capacity arithmetic. A factory at 75% utilisation with unpredictable arrivals can have longer lead times than one at 85% with steady ones. Every operations leader has seen this. Very little software takes it seriously.

Trooba is Factory Flow Intelligence: a model of how work actually moves, built to be interrogated before decisions are made rather than reported on after they were.

Where it comes from

Trooba’s founder is an industrial engineer who trained in Quick Response Manufacturing under Professor Rajan Suri at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who developed the methodology, and has spent years applying it inside high-mix, low-volume manufacturing operations — including running them.

The first place the method was applied was Tarinika, the founder’s own jewellery manufacturing company: make-to-order, multi-SKU, and about four weeks of lead time with capacity sitting available. The constraint turned out to be lot sizing and queue dynamics rather than machine speed. Lead time went to seven days on the same machines.

The product started as a rebuild of a factory-modelling tool that worked but had been left behind: correct mathematics, an interface nobody would open twice. Trooba Flow keeps the analytical rigour underneath and makes the result immediately understandable — the conclusion comes before the chart, and the model behind it stays open to the engineer who has to defend the recommendation.