Fouch knew automated sensors could help by, for example, identifying environmental causes of hole punching issues, but with so many potential testing options he didn’t know where to start. “The worst thing you can do, in a small business especially, is to be stuck in pilot purgatory, hoping to find a viable product,” he said. “If others have done it before, they know the possible path, and they can save you time and money.”

That’s what three directors and managers from Apple’s engineering and operations teams offered when Fouch and Quinn Shanahan, who oversees medical device production and specialty products at Polygon, visited the manufacturing academy in October and November, respectively. In Fouch’s estimated five hours, Apple employees analyzed Polygon’s challenges and applied the industrial engineering equation of Little’s Law—which identifies capacity bottlenecks—to create solutions.

The result is a detailed mapping strategy with sensors and software that can track production and alert about anomalies. Polygon can now count the number of passes the pipe makes through the grinder, and will soon understand whether an overheating motor or other factors could explain the broken hole punch, Shanahan said.

If all goes as planned, Polygon will implement a working system to address the most important bottlenecks for no more than $50,000 versus the $500,000 an automation consultancy might charge, according to Fouch. The Apple team is working on visiting Polygon to discuss other upgrades. “They’ve walked these trails before,” Fouch said. “Without their help, it would take us a long time.”

Apple’s Herrera says that giving small manufacturers a sense of the benefits of automation and other technologies will eventually lead them to work with consultants and invest in more expensive systems.

Two other academy participants told WIRED that they haven’t received much help from Apple—Herrera said in which companies prepare a “problem statement” that helps Apple—but they’re working to bring what they’ve learned to their factories. Jack Kosloski, a project engineer at Blue Lake, a plastic-free packaging startup, said it was eye-opening to hear about the depth of Apple’s product testing.