Last week I was back on the factory floor working on scale-up projects for two clients. These are the weeks I love most, when the ideas and spreadsheets finally meet reality. Seeing the product run through the line and watching a concept come to life never gets old.

During one of these runs, a client had made some recipe changes and told the floor lead she would rely on his experience to alert her if anything didn’t look right. It sounds logical, especially when a lead has been running the line for years and has seen every kind of batch come through. But as it usually does, this approach caused problems.

This moment reminded me of something I was very intentional about training my staff on back when we ran CleanCopack. If a client ever said they were going to rely on the line lead to figure it out, the instruction was simple: stop the conversation and get Liz and R&D involved immediately.

Here’s why. Line leads are trained to execute batches exactly as they are written. Their job is to follow the batch ticket, maintain consistency, and ensure the run stays in control. That mindset is incredibly valuable for quality and efficiency, but it’s not the same as product development or process engineering.

It’s easy to assume that because someone has seen thousands of runs, they’ll know what adjustments to make when a new formula behaves differently. But their focus is on execution, not experimentation. They’re looking at the batch ticket, not the mixture, and that’s what you want them doing. Consistency depends on discipline.

When scaling up a protein bar or any other product, recipe adjustments and process changes should come from R&D or technical leadership. The production floor is where you prove the process, not where you redesign it.

If there’s one takeaway from last week, it’s this: success during scale-up depends on respecting the boundary between development and execution. When those two functions communicate clearly and stay in their lanes, you end up with a product that scales smoothly, meets spec, and keeps everyone on the same page.

Scaling food products is never just about the recipe. It’s about the system, the people, and the clarity that connects them.