After six rounds of tooling repair, the plastic cam-cover program was still experiencing recurring molding defects and declining delivery confidence. The Critical Path Diagnostic revealed that the real constraint was not the tool itself, but a missing upstream Moldflow simulation that should have validated filling behavior, gate strategy, and flow assumptions before manufacture. CPM immediately moved that dependency onto the critical path, used the simulation to isolate the root cause, and then managed the remaining recovery activities week by week through tool correction, sample production, and validation.

The result was an end to ineffective repair cycles, clearer technical decisions, a disciplined recovery cadence, and series timing preserved.