Context: Cost per unit is a manufacturing KPI that reveals whether execution keeps pace as production scales, exposing whether loss multiplies quietly or is caught in time.

Challenges: Scrap rises but output keeps flowing, changeovers stretch while schedules hold, and throughput softens yet plans remain unchanged. With ownership split across production, maintenance, and planning, no one intervenes when marginal cost begins to drift.

Solution: The Cost Efficiency Guidance Agent, an AI agent built using Microsoft Copilot Studio, monitors yield, routing, and throughput signals as a run progresses and intervenes during scheduling and changeover decisions, flagging rising marginal cost before volume locks in inefficiency.

Impact: Manufacturers adopting this approach see losses corrected while runs are active rather than analyzed afterward, with unit cost improving not because controls tighten, but because execution responds in time to keep scale aligned with efficiency.