Who attends
The plant or site manager chairs the meeting. Attendees are the heads of each department: production, maintenance or engineering, quality, health and safety, supply chain or planning, and often HR and finance. Tier 2 owners may join for specific escalations they need a decision on.
When and how long
Tier 3 runs either daily, after all tier 2 meetings have finished, for around 20 to 30 minutes, or weekly for 30 to 45 minutes with a stronger focus on KPI trends and strategic initiatives. Many sites combine a short daily tier 3 with a longer weekly review. It is usually held at a site board, ideally on or near the shop floor rather than in a boardroom.
What tier 3 reviews
| Area | Typical focus |
|---|---|
| Safety | Incidents, high-potential near misses, open risk actions |
| Quality | Customer complaints, holds, release issues |
| Delivery | Site output versus plan, customer orders at risk |
| Cost and people | Overtime, staffing gaps, spend decisions |
| Escalations | Issues from tier 2 needing site-level authority |
| Improvement | Progress on site priorities and breakthrough objectives |
How escalation works at tier 3
Tier 3 is the decision point for anything that crosses departments, needs capital or spend approval, conflicts with another priority, or affects customers. Issues that need corporate support or policy change go to a regional or business-unit review, sometimes called tier 4. Every decision is fed back down through tier 2 to the team that raised it.
Common mistakes
- Re-solving problems that tier 2 should own, which undermines the lower tiers.
- Reviewing lagging monthly figures instead of yesterday's performance.
- Leaders never attending lower tiers, so they lose sight of how the system works on the floor.
Example
The tier 2 request to buy a stock of guide rails reaches tier 3. The site manager approves the spend, asks the maintenance manager to check whether the same rail is used on other lines, and confirms the decision will reach the packing teams through tomorrow's tier 2 meeting.