A major manufacturer of power generation systems and equipment was experiencing productivity and throughput issues that jeopardized delivery on five major power plant rebuild projects.  Failure to deliver on time would result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties.   With five projects being produced simultaneously, shop floor scheduling became extremely difficult and the hiring of an additional scheduler was being considered.  At the same time a continuous improvement project was initiated starting with a value stream mapping exercise of the entire operation.  From that exercise, the client initiated a rigorous 5S program to establish a neat and orderly environment.  As part of the 5S activities, designated areas for work-in-process (WIP) were identified which required smaller batch sizes to be used.  A pull system was established that drove the activities upstream to replenish the WIP. The smaller batch sizes and reduced WIP revealed issues in cutting, bending, welding and assembly of the boiler components.  Each issue was addressed by finding and eliminating the root causes of the issues that were interrupting the flow of the operation.  By establishing basic stability and focusing on the improvement efforts on the flow of the product while reducing the work in process on the floor, over a six month period the backlog was eliminated and all the projects shipped on time.  Overtime and rework hours were reduced significantly and the hiring of the additional scheduler became unnecessary.