The changes inside Hollen’s forge did not happen overnight.
At first, most workers downstairs barely even noticed what Ernest was doing upstairs.
To them, he was simply Victor’s strange son who sohow escaped furnace duty and started carrying parchnts instead of coal.
But by the end of the first week, the effects slowly started becoming visible.
The first thing Ernest focused on was organization. The forge previously handled records like people stuffing random tools into a single chest and hoping they could find them later.
rchant requests were constantly delayed because paperwork disappeared beneath unrelated docunts.
Workers often waited for instructions because nobody knew which orders had priority.
Even Hollen himself wasted ti searching through ledgers.
So Ernest changed that first.
He divided the shelves into categories.
rchant orders.
Inventory records.
Completed paynts.
Pending paynts.
Coal deliveries.
Iron shipnts.
Finished contracts.
At first, Hollen thought the system looked unnecessary.
Then one morning, a rchant arrived asking about a delayed farming tool shipnt.
Normally, Hollen would spend several minutes digging through random parchnts while getting increasingly irritated.
This ti, Ernest imdiately walked toward the shelf, grabbed the correct record, and handed it over within seconds.
The rchant looked surprised.
Hollen looked even more surprised.
That alone already changed workflow speed upstairs.
The second improvent involved inventory tracking.
Before Ernest arrived, workers simply grabbed materials whenever they needed them.
Nobody accurately tracked how much iron or coal actually remained.
As a result, shortages constantly happened unexpectedly.
And whenever shortages happened, Hollen panic-bought materials from nearby suppliers at inflated prices.
Ernest introduced standardized inventory sheets.
Every incoming material got recorded.
Every outgoing material got recorded too.
Then at the end of each workday, remaining stock got physically verified.
At first, the workers downstairs hated it.
One blacksmith even grumbled openly.
"So now we count coal like rchants count coins?"
Ernest simply replied calmly.
"If we don’t count materials, then we don’t know where money disappears."
That statent spread surprisingly fast inside the forge.
By the second week, the improvents beca harder to ignore.
For the first ti in years, the forge stopped running out of coal unexpectedly.
That alone stabilized production.
Before, furnaces occasionally slowed down because workers waited for delayed fuel deliveries.
Now, Ernest started forecasting consumption rates.
He reviewed how much coal each furnace consud daily and compared it against incoming deliveries.
Once stock levels reached a certain point, new orders were arranged before shortages happened.
To explain it to Hollen simply, Ernest used an analogy.
"Right now, your old system was like waiting until your stomach was empty before planting crops."
That explanation imdiately clicked inside the forge owner’s head.
Planning ahead reduced desperation.
And desperation was expensive.
Another thing Ernest introduced was production tracking.
Before, nobody truly knew how productive each workstation was.
Workers forged tools endlessly without asurable output targets.
So Ernest created daily production sheets.
Worker Team.
Product Type.
Quantity Produced.
Materials Used.
Simple.
But powerful.
After several days, patterns imdiately appeared.
One furnace team consistently produced more horseshoes than another despite using nearly identical material quantities.
At first, Hollen assud the second team was simply lazy.
But Ernest investigated further.
The issue turned out to be workflow positioning.
The slower team constantly walked farther to retrieve tools and water buckets.
Small inefficiencies.
But repeated dozens of tis daily.
Back on Earth, modern factories optimized floor layouts carefully for exactly this reason.
Even seconds mattered at scale.
So Ernest reorganized several workstations downstairs.
Coal storage moved closer to the furnaces.
Frequently used tools got grouped near specific stations.
Water buckets beca assigned per workstation instead of shared randomly.
To the workers, the changes initially felt minor.
But after several days, production speed noticeably increased.
Less walking.
Less waiting.
Less shouting for missing tools.
The forge slowly started feeling less chaotic.
By the third week, Hollen’s attitude toward Ernest changed completely.
At first, the owner treated him like an unusually useful child.
Now?
Hollen started actively asking for his opinion before making purchasing decisions.
One afternoon, the owner entered the office carrying two supplier contracts.
"Which one should I take?" he asked.
That alone honestly said a lot.
Three weeks earlier, Hollen barely trusted Ernest enough to organize parchnts.
Now the forge owner consulted him on business decisions.
Ernest reviewed both supplier offers carefully.
One supplier offered cheaper coal but inconsistent delivery schedules.
The other charged slightly more but guaranteed stable shipnts.
Most people here would simply choose the cheaper option imdiately.
But Ernest calculated differently.
Delayed deliveries created furnace downti.
Downti slowed production.
Slower production delayed rchant contracts.
Delayed contracts delayed paynts.
So technically, unreliable cheap coal could beco more expensive long term.
He explained it simply to Hollen.
"A broken wheel costs more than a strong wheel if the wagon stops moving."
Hollen stared at him quietly for several seconds after hearing that.
Then chose the reliable supplier.
By the fourth week, even the workers downstairs started noticing the changes.
The forge operated smoother now.
Materials arrived more consistently.
Orders got completed faster.
rchant complaints reduced.
Workers no longer spent half the morning searching for missing tools or waiting for instructions.
Even paynt processing improved because Ernest started organizing wage records properly.
Before, labor paynts depended heavily on rough mory and scattered notes.
Now, each worker’s attendance and workload got recorded clearly.
That reduced disputes imdiately.
One worker tried claiming extra wages for days he never worked.
Ernest quietly checked the records and disproved it within seconds.
After that incident, workers slowly stopped questioning the new systems upstairs.
Because for the first ti, the forge no longer felt like a giant machine barely holding itself together.
It finally started functioning like an actual business.
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