The Future of Preroll Manufacturing Is Touching Fewer Prerolls

We Didn’t Set Out to Build a Lean Manufacturing System

At Hummingbird, we didn’t start by studying Toyota. We didn’t start by reading books on Lean Manufacturing. We started by trying to solve the same problems every preroll manufacturer faces. How do you produce more prerolls with fewer headaches? How do you train operators faster? How do you improve consistency? How do you support more SKUs without creating chaos on the production floor?

Over the years, we kept arriving at the same conclusion. The biggest improvements rarely came from making a task faster. The biggest improvements came from eliminating the task entirely.

Years later, as we began studying Lean Manufacturing, we realized that many of the ideas we had been implementing already had names. Concepts like motion waste, standard work, mistake-proofing, workflow optimization, and continuous improvement felt remarkably familiar. Lean Manufacturing wasn’t introducing us to new problems. It was giving us a framework for understanding the problems we had already spent years solving.

The more we learned, the more obvious it became that preroll manufacturing is heading down the same path traveled by every mature manufacturing industry before it. The companies that win are rarely the ones doing the most work. They are the ones that eliminate the most unnecessary work.

Every Touch Has a Cost

One of the most powerful ideas in Lean Manufacturing is also one of the simplest: every touch has a cost.

Every time an employee picks up a preroll, rotates it, weighs it, transfers it to another workstation, inspects it, or reworks it, labor is being consumed. Most operators immediately recognize the labor cost. What is less obvious are the secondary costs that come with every touch. Each interaction creates an opportunity for inconsistency. Each interaction requires training. Each interaction introduces another opportunity for human error.

Many manufacturing processes become more complicated over time because additional steps are added to solve specific problems. Eventually those steps become accepted as normal. Nobody questions them anymore. Lean Manufacturing encourages manufacturers to challenge those assumptions. Instead of asking how to perform a task faster, Lean asks whether the task should exist at all.

That distinction may seem small, but it fundamentally changes the way manufacturers think about production. Instead of optimizing activities, they begin optimizing workflows. Instead of focusing on individual tasks, they focus on the system as a whole.

The World’s Best Manufacturers Learned This Lesson Decades Ago

One of the reasons Lean Manufacturing became so influential is because it worked. Automotive companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, electronics producers, and consumer packaged goods companies all discovered that removing waste created larger gains than simply increasing machine speed.

Consider pharmaceutical manufacturing. A modern tablet press can produce enormous quantities of tablets with remarkable consistency. What makes the process impressive is not simply the throughput. What makes it impressive is the absence of unnecessary handling. Operators are not carrying individual tablets around the facility. They are not weighting each tablet individually. They are not repeatedly touching products throughout production. The system has been designed to minimize unnecessary work.

The same philosophy exists in automotive manufacturing. Toyota did not become one of the most respected manufacturers in the world because it built the biggest factories. It became successful because it became obsessed with eliminating waste. Waste in movement. Waste in waiting. Waste in transportation. Waste in defects. Waste in unnecessary processing.

The machine mattered. The workflow mattered more.

The Cannabis Industry Still Touches Too Many Prerolls

Cannabis manufacturing remains a relatively young industry. Many production methods evolved from small-scale operations where flexibility mattered more than efficiency. As production volumes increased, many of those same practices scaled with them.

Walk through a typical preroll production floor and you’ll often see the same pattern repeated. Prerolls are picked up, moved, weighed, adjusted, inspected, transferred, closed, and packaged. In some cases, the same preroll may be handled multiple times before it ever reaches the final package.

The activity feels productive because people are busy. Product is moving. Work is happening.

Lean Manufacturing asks a different question.

How much of that activity is actually creating value?

That question can be uncomfortable because it forces manufacturers to challenge long-standing habits. Yet it often reveals opportunities that dramatically improve productivity. The goal is not to make people work harder. The goal is to remove work that never needed to exist in the first place.

Lean Manufacturing Doesn’t Ask How to Work Faster. It Asks Why the Work Exists.

This may be the single most important lesson cannabis can learn from Lean Manufacturing.

Most manufacturing discussions focus on speed. How fast can we fill? How fast can we close? How fast can we package?

Lean starts somewhere else.

Why are we performing the task at all?

Imagine a preroll that gets touched six times before it reaches packaging. A traditional approach focuses on making those six touches more efficient. Lean asks whether all six touches are necessary. Could the process be redesigned so that the preroll is only touched three times? Could it be touched once? Could some of those interactions disappear entirely?

The most powerful Lean improvements often come from eliminating work rather than accelerating it. Removing a step entirely almost always creates a bigger impact than making that step ten percent faster.

The Difference Between Machine Thinking and Workflow Thinking

The cannabis industry spends a tremendous amount of time discussing machines. Machine specifications. Machine speed. Machine throughput. Machine automation.

Those metrics matter, but they are only part of the story.

Workflow thinking starts from a different perspective. Instead of asking how well a machine performs a task, workflow thinking asks how the entire system performs. A machine may be capable of producing enormous output, but if the surrounding workflow creates excessive handling, difficult changeovers, complicated training requirements, or unnecessary labor, overall efficiency suffers.

This is one of the reasons mature manufacturing industries focus so heavily on process design. The machine is only one component of the system. The workflow surrounding the machine often determines whether an operation succeeds or struggles.

At Hummingbird, we have increasingly come to view preroll manufacturing through this lens. We are not simply interested in filling prerolls faster. We are interested in designing workflows that eliminate unnecessary work.

Why We Became Obsessed With Reducing Touches

Looking back, many of the products we developed were driven by a single objective: reduce touches reduces labor costs.

The more we analyzed production workflows, the more obvious this became. Every time we could remove a step, simplify a movement, or reduce handling, the entire operation improved. Training became easier. Consistency improved. Throughput often increased naturally because operators were spending less time performing low-value activities.

This philosophy eventually became one of the guiding principles behind the Hummingbird Workflow. Instead of asking how to perform existing tasks faster, we began asking how to eliminate them.

That simple shift in thinking changed everything.

Consistency Should Come From the Process, Not the Operator

Another core principle of Lean Manufacturing is standard work. Great manufacturing systems do not depend on extraordinary operators. They depend on repeatable processes.

This idea strongly influenced our approach to fill kits. While many people think of fill kits as calibration tools, we view them as workflow tools. Their purpose is not simply to achieve a target weight. Their purpose is to create repeatable outcomes regardless of who is operating the equipment.

The best manufacturing systems reduce dependence on tribal knowledge. They reduce dependence on individual technique. They reduce dependence on operator experience.

Consistency should come from the process itself.

That is one of the most important lessons Lean Manufacturing has to offer.

The Goal Isn’t More Automation. The Goal Is Less Waste.

One of the reasons Lean Manufacturing remains relevant decades after its introduction is because it focuses on outcomes rather than technology.

Lean does not care whether a process is manual, semi-automated, or fully automated.

Lean cares about waste. A large machine can be Lean. A small machine can be Lean.An automated process can be Lean. A manual process can be Lean.

The determining factor is not the technology. The determining factor is how effectively the workflow eliminates unnecessary work.

This is why we believe the future conversation in cannabis manufacturing will gradually shift away from machine comparisons and toward workflow design. The companies that consistently outperform their competitors will be the companies that remove the most waste from their operations.

The Best Step Is the One You Never Have to Perform

The more we study Lean Manufacturing, the more we believe cannabis is following the same path traveled by every mature manufacturing industry before it.

The future is not touching more prerolls faster. The future is touching fewer prerolls.

The future is not more complexity. The future is less waste.

The future is not asking operators to do more.The future is building workflows that require less.

At Hummingbird, this philosophy influences everything we do. Not because we are trying to build a Lean Manufacturing company, but because we are trying to build better preroll workflows. As it turns out, those goals are often the same.

If Lean Manufacturing has taught us anything, it is this: the best step in a process is usually the one you never have to perform.