Efficiency Behind the Scenes

Back on the streets, the production managers are also benefiting from the behind-the-scenes improvements made in Montreal.

Now that the integration software has been implemented, production managers use an entirely new system to create an inventory of equipment necessary for the new mobile "city." Instead of checking off a paper list of all the lights, cameras, speakers and stage materials needed for a production, each piece of equipment is tagged with a bar code that's scanned by a handheld device connected to the network.

Cirque du Soleil says these mobile devices have cut in half the time it takes to inventory an entire 180,000-square-foot mobile city, and virtually eliminated errors.

"It's something that no one sees because it doesn't affect the day-to-day performance," Savoie points out. "It's too early to say exactly how much money we've saved, but I know that going forward, the time we'll save just on the development side makes it worthwhile."