You are Catalina Zuluaga, controller of Textil Andino, a maker of work uniforms in Medellín, Colombia. The board has just approved COP 50 million to correct the plant's variances, and the money has to last from April to July. By Wednesday you must hand in the plan for April.
The situation
It is Monday 6 April 2026. The Medellín plant makes about 85,000 uniforms a month — trousers, shirts and jackets for security firms, hospitals and industry — and costs them with a standard-cost system that you yourself turned into a monthly dashboard. The first-quarter report added up to COP 436 million of unfavorable variances. Until now your job was to measure them; from this week on, you decide what the money to correct them is spent on.
Two problems sit inside the plant. In cutting, waste is running at 12.0% against an 8.0% standard: the eight machines have gone six months without preventive maintenance, and the plant manager, Rubén Darío Cardona, blames worn blades and a calibration left wrong. In sewing, each uniform takes 0.90 hours against the 0.85 standard, at COP 28,000 an hour: there are 24 new operators who are not yet at the veterans' pace, and nobody can say how much or in how many weeks they will improve.
Each month you can put up to COP 15 million into maintaining the cutting machines and up to COP 10 million into an intensive course for the new operators, always from the same pot. The third cell is cotton: today it costs COP 17,400 a kilo, below the COP 18,500 standard, but US–China trade tension is pushing it up, and purchasing can sign a forward contract at a premium.
At 8:15 two calls come in. Cardona wants to replace the blades on four machines this very week. The course provider needs to know by Friday whether to open a group. In July the board will look at the cumulative variance and at where waste and hours ended up against standard.