🔍 Article co-created with Guillermo Mealla Castro Bolivia, General Manager at Sinteplast Bolivia (🇧🇴 Bolivia), and Augusto Unzaga, host of Keru Podcast.
🎙️ This article was inspired by Episode 22 of Keru Podcast.
Keru Podcast is a podcast (in Spanish) created by Globalita.io, where we talk with the people who lead Latin American industry from the inside.
Manufacturing with discipline: an underestimated urgency in the Bolivian chemical industry
Operations management in the chemical industry in countries like Bolivia has a particularity that cannot be ignored: the pressure to supply and to survive the context often pushes aside the need to organize, document and systematize. The problem is that without order there is no sustainable efficiency. And without efficiency, growth doesn’t just stall: it reverses.
Guillermo Mealla Castro Bolivia, from his role at Sinteplast Bolivia, lived this dilemma firsthand:
“The urgent eats you up. And if you don’t step back, you can spend years fixing things that shouldn’t be happening.”
This pattern —always operating under pressure, solving by intuition, prioritizing the immediate— is common in many industries in Bolivia. But in the chemical industry, that style has a limit. Because of operational risks, because of health regulations, because of the traceability the market demands.
When Guillermo took over leadership at Sinteplast Bolivia, the first thing he noticed was that many technical decisions were made on the spot, without repeatable processes. From weighing raw materials to dispatching finished products, variability was high. Not out of negligence, but for lack of a system.
“We had experience, we had the will, but we didn’t have routine. And without routine, error is only a matter of time.”
The first decision was to document. Not just for auditing, but for alignment. Every step, every batch, every check had to be repeatable to the same standard, no matter who was in charge that day. This logic is inspired by the fundamentals of Standard Work in Lean Manufacturing: reducing variability not to robotize, but to free up time and energy for what really requires analysis, since a process that isn’t recorded can’t be measured
From there, what followed was a step-by-step operational transformation:
- Writing manuals for key processes in production and dispatch.
- Layout redesign to shorten travel distances, minimizing times.
- Implementation of visual boards to track orders and checks.
- Cross-training so more people could take on more roles.
The results weren’t instant, but they were consistent: fewer errors, less rework, less dependence on individuals, and with records that can be measured to optimize and work toward a standard time, detecting deviations and being able to correct them in the short term
Industrial logistics planning: how to get ahead in an uncertain environment
In the Bolivian context, where supply chains are unstable, industrial logistics planning is both a technical tool and an act of anticipation. It’s not just about moving materials: it’s about preventing a stockout or a logistics detour from stopping the entire operation.
In the experience of Guillermo Mealla Castro Sinteplast, this was one of the critical points to solve:
“It would happen that everything was ready… except the container lid. And that stops the whole batch.”
To deal with this kind of situation, Guillermo drove a change in the planning logic. Instead of working with reactive weekly planning, they moved to a model of layered synchronized planning:
- Long horizon (3-6 months): demand projection by customer and by product line.
- Medium horizon (4 weeks): validation of the availability of critical inputs, transport and installed capacity.
- Short horizon (weekly): production orders cross-checked against replenishment times.
This model, aligned with the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) approach, made it possible to anticipate bottlenecks and reduce the number of urgent changes on the plant floor. In addition, a logistics risk map was integrated, where each supplier was classified by criticality, reliability and response time.
“You can’t plan with Excel alone. You have to know the supplier, know how they react, have a plan B… and C.”
This new planning approach also had a positive impact on internal operations: with better visibility of what was coming, the load of last-minute decisions decreased and the production pace stabilized without interruptions. The Just in Time principle, hard to apply in highly uncertain environments, was adapted into a realistic version: not stockpiling, but forecasting intelligently, reducing costs from products, inputs or raw materials sitting idle for long periods
Producing more, without overloading: balancing efficiency and care for the team
One of the frequent mistakes when pursuing operational efficiency is thinking that producing more is simply a matter of pushing harder. More shifts, more speed, more demands. But in a chemical industry, where an error can escalate quickly, that logic has consequences. And in Bolivia, where teams tend to be small, burnout shows up fast if it isn’t managed well.
Guillermo Mealla Castro Bolivia faced this tension with a different perspective:
“A team doesn’t break from working a lot. It breaks from working without meaning.”
Instead of adding pressure, he chose to redistribute the load. One of the key decisions was to work on a role matrix: training each operator in more than one function, so tasks could be rotated according to workload, energy and the level of focus required.
In addition, productivity indicators were redesigned, incorporating not only volume but also stability, rework avoided and first-pass quality compliance. This is aligned with the principles of TPM (Total Productive Maintenance), where efficiency is measured in terms of availability, performance and quality, not just units produced.
Another important decision was to limit overtime: beyond the economic impact, the decision was about sustaining the pace. Instead of asking for more time, they asked for more order. And it worked.
“The team responds better when it knows what’s going to happen, not when it lives putting out fires.”
This created a more stable environment, with fewer accidents, more predictability and lower turnover. In an industry with high operational risks, the stability of the human team is a critical and fundamental asset to maintain
Sustaining without backsliding: efficiency with operational resilience
In chemical processing industries, sustaining the operation isn’t just producing every day. It’s doing it consistently, without degrading the system, without building up wear and without compromising future capacity. That is the difference between operating and sustaining. And that was one of the clearest approaches that Guillermo Mealla Castro implemented as a management principle.
“In a chemical company you don’t win just by scaling. You win when you can scale and keep delivering the same way, on time and in full.”
The concept of operational sustainability he promoted was based on three pillars:
-
Process stability: every procedure had to be executable the same way, regardless of the day or the operator.
-
Supplier robustness: critical buffers were defined for raw materials sensitive to weather, transport or quality variability.
-
Incident response capacity: failure scenarios (power outage, weather or technical failure) were simulated with written protocols and defined roles.
-
Strategic plans are drawn up for each possible scenario, so that everyone knows how to act in each situation, avoiding time lost in deciding what actions to take.
This logic follows the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) methodology, traditional in high-risk sectors such as chemicals. Unlike many reactive models, this system prevents deviations from the design stage.
In addition, Guillermo worked on the structural resilience of the team: if one person is absent, the system doesn’t stop. To achieve this, he applied an operational backup system that required every critical task to have at least two trained people. This reduced downtime due to absences and made it possible to handle vacations better without sacrificing compliance, eliminating the process’s dependence on a specialized operator
“A company that only works when everything is perfect… is not a reliable company; in times of uncertainty, versatility is EVERYTHING.”
Making technical decisions in uncertain contexts
The chemical industry in Bolivia faces particularities that are hard to ignore: unstable regulations, markets that shift with political decisions, difficulty accessing technology and logistics conditioned by geography. In this context, operational decisions can’t depend on technical factors alone: they require reading the environment, flexibility and vision.
Guillermo Mealla Castro Bolivia learned to move on that terrain by combining two criteria: a solid technical foundation + flexible reading of the context.
“Sometimes the best reactor isn’t the one with the most capacity, but the one that arrives on time and can be maintained locally.”
This approach made it possible to make realistic decisions, such as:
- Choosing technologies adapted to local infrastructure (voltage, available spare parts).
- Validating alternative suppliers in neighboring countries in the face of import delays.
- Redefining safety stock not by volume, but by logistics criticality.
These decisions were based on tools such as ABC Analysis cross-referenced with logistics criticality, a method that made it possible to allocate resources not by volume sold, but by operational impact. This logic is also reflected in the Hoshin Kanri methodology, where every decision is aligned with the real capacity of the system and with the long-term strategy.
“You don’t decide with Excel alone. You decide with data, with street knowledge and with context, generating strategies. That is industrial management in Bolivia.”
Within this same framework, work was done to adapt how indicators were defined: instead of replicating global standards, local operational metrics were created to measure stability, reliability and adaptability. For example, the KPI of “production without major interruptions” replaced traditional OEE, because in that environment it better reflected the real success of the operation.
Technical culture without bureaucracy: the value of simple things done well
One of the strongest legacies of Guillermo Mealla Castro -t’s management was establishing a clear technical culture, oriented to results and free of unnecessary bureaucracy. It wasn’t about filling out spreadsheets, but about understanding why something is measured, what you’re trying to correct and how you improve.
“If something is measured and nothing changes, we’re doing bureaucracy. And on the plant floor, that costs dearly.”
The first step was to eliminate reports nobody read. The information circuit was redefined: who generates what, for whom, how often and with what follow-up action. Then, the use of physical boards on the plant floor was standardized, with the main KPIs displayed simply: production compliance, quality incidents, energy use and delivery compliance by process, with first and last names
This model is inspired by the Visual Management concept from Lean Manufacturing, which seeks for everyone to understand the state of the operation just by looking. In addition, every daily floor meeting was encouraged to begin with a quick review of that data.
Middle managers were also trained to take an active role in root cause analysis. The 5 Whys method and Ishikawa diagrams were used, not as theoretical tools, but as part of the daily conversation. This way, each incident didn’t end up as just a report: it became a space for collective technical learning
“Quality is not the quality department’s responsibility. It’s a reflection of the system. And that system is all of us.”
This cultural shift created a domino effect: fewer errors, more learning and, above all, greater team involvement. When each person understands their role in the process, improvement stops being a speech and becomes a routine.
Integrating production and logistics: synchronicity to avoid bottlenecks
One of the biggest structural challenges in industrial logistics planning is that production and logistics usually work in silos. In many chemical plants, production finishes its batch and hands it over without knowing whether storage space is available or whether transport is aligned. That mismatch generates invisible inefficiencies.
In - Bolivia, Guillermo integrated both functions under the same synchronized weekly planning logic. Joint production and logistics meetings were set up every Monday, where they aligned:
- Expected volumes per line
- Intermediate storage capacity
- Dispatch priorities by customer or location
- Constraints due to weather, routes or transport availability
This model was based on the Pull System principles of the Toyota Production System, where real demand determines production, not the other way around. It also incorporated route scheduling tools that made it possible to anticipate special logistics needs (hard-to-reach routes, restrictions in urban areas).
The result was a significant reduction in downtime - between end of line and dispatch, less congestion in loading areas and an improvement in delivery compliance without needing to expand the fleet.
“Logistics doesn’t start when the truck arrives. It starts when you decide what you’re going to produce and when.”
Keru Podcast is a podcast (in Spanish) created by Globalita.io, where we talk with the people who lead Latin American industry from the inside.
Is your plant growing on solid processes… or just surviving the daily chaos?
Guillermo Mealla Castro was an industrial engineer with more than 20 years of experience leading operations in manufacturing plants, industrial process optimization, circular economy and climate action in Latin America, Asia and international contexts.
View profile and episode →
