How do I decide whether another pouch guide is worth building?

We have manual timings, but the robot trial only measured prepared bag to tray. I will run the comparison with the same incoming bags and the person who normally packs them.

Pick an ordinary awkward order, not the one bag that makes your guide look brilliant. And decide beforehand how much setup and attendance you can afford, otherwise the next nearly-working insert will always look worth another go

We compared a normal mixed order. Presentation consumed most of the handling time; it also needed me to settle several uncertain pickups. The operator preferred the manual arrangement, particularly when changing bag sizes.

Consider whether a stable subset has a worthwhile independent case, but do not assign the difficult products to manual work and then omit that remaining workload from the overall comparison.

Could be worth checking a stable subset on paper. I wouldn't build another insert first. You already have a fair bit of evidence that the general-purpose bag scheme is expensive to babysit

A new guide might remove a specific preparation task. Which task is it intended to remove? Without that answer, it is difficult to estimate whether its design and changeover cost is justified.

Oscar, it would locate the wider seal but would not spread the contents. Kai and Leo, we will cost one stable subset without further tooling first. The mixed-bag proposal is stopped; the manual bench remains in use.

Useful boundary. Leave the guide on the shelf while you price it; having an empty space on the bench can be more informative than another afternoon making the trial behave