The Broken Machine

Most companies don't fail all at once. They break slowly.

Processes drift. Accountability disappears. Sales promises what Operations cannot deliver. Customer Service becomes the cleanup crew. Inventory grows while shortages continue. Production schedules become suggestions. Quality problems recur. SOPs multiply without improving the work. Meetings replace decisions. And leaders spend more and more of their time keeping the machine running.

The Broken Machine is a field manual for fixing that company.

John L. Duquette takes executives, owners, operators, and functional leaders inside 46 specific organizational breakpoints-then shows exactly how to diagnose the real cause, redesign the system, assign ownership, establish the right metrics, implement the change, and verify that the problem stays fixed.

This is not a book about transformation theater. It is about rebuilding the operating system of a company from the inside out.

Inside, you'll learn how to:

- Audit and rewrite SOPs so they reflect how work should actually be performed
- Eliminate unnecessary approvals, handoffs, workarounds, and bureaucracy
- Rebuild Sales around pipeline quality, customer fit, forecast accuracy, and profitable growth-not outdated quota pressure
- Redesign Customer Service so it solves root causes instead of repeatedly absorbing organizational failures
- Connect demand, purchasing, raw materials, inventory, capacity, production, quality release, shipment, and customer commitments into one operating system
- Build production plans around real material, labor, equipment, and constraint capacity
- Strengthen Quality and Regulatory systems without using compliance as an excuse for unnecessary complexity
- Fix CAPA, complaint handling, supplier quality, and recurring defects
- Replace dashboard theater with executive KPIs that trigger decisions
- Clarify decision rights, accountability, operating cadence, and leadership ownership
- Use technology, AI, and automation only after the underlying process deserves to survive
- Execute a practical 100-day company rebuild and leave behind a system that can run without permanent executive heroics

Throughout the book, real operating situations connect Sales, Service, Planning, Production, Quality, Finance, and leadership instead of treating them as isolated departments. One customer order can reveal failures across the entire enterprise-from the original commercial promise through material availability, production, quality release, shipment, service, cash, and repeat business.

The goal is not another initiative.

The goal is a company that knows how work moves, who owns the outcome, what evidence matters, which metric should trigger action, and whether an improvement actually stayed fixed.

If your company is profitable but unnecessarily difficult to operate-or if growth has exposed systems that no longer work-The Broken Machine gives you the blueprint to rebuild it.