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STRATAGEM_

Method

Find. Fix. Prove.

Named so you can hold us to it, sequenced so you can stop at any stage. Each phase ends with something your board can read.

01

2 weeks · £9,500 fixed

Find — the Diagnostic Fortnight

Two weeks on your floor. We pull two years of data before we arrive, then walk every shift — including nights, where the truth usually clocks on. Operators get listened to before managers get interviewed; the constraint is usually common knowledge everywhere except the boardroom. Output: the three constraints that matter, costed, with a baseline your FD signs. If the honest finding is ‘this isn’t an ops problem’, the fortnight ends there and so do the fees.

02

6–16 weeks · scoped from the diagnostic

Fix — redesign with the line

Changes are designed in working sessions with the supervisors and setters who’ll run them, tested on one line or one cell first, and written up as standard work by the people doing it — not laminated by us. A fix the line didn’t build is a fix the line quietly reverts by Christmas. Capital cases, where needed, arrive board-ready: payback, sensitivity, and the measurement plan attached.

03

8–20 weeks · part success-linked

Prove — embedded until it moves

The weeks where most consulting disappears are the weeks we’re contracted for. We track the number weekly against the signed baseline, in the open, on the floor. Part of the embed fee rides on hitting it. We leave when two conditions hold: the number has moved, and the review that keeps it moving runs without us in the room.

A machinery hall in a manufacturing plant
FIG. 04 — STANDARD WORK, WRITTEN BY THE PEOPLE WHO DO IT

The stop clause

Every phase is a valid exit.

Take the diagnostic and fix it yourselves — about a third of clients do exactly that, and several came back years later with the next constraint. The phases are priced separately because they are separable. Consulting that can only be bought whole is a programme, and programmes are where numbers go to hide.

Ask any consultancy

  • Where’s the baseline, who signed it?
  • Can we stop after the diagnostic?
  • What part of your fee rides on the result?

Next step

Bring us a number that should be better.

OTIF, unit cost, scrap rate, working capital — whichever one keeps coming up in the monthly review. A half-hour call tells you whether the Diagnostic Fortnight is worth £9,500 to you. We’ll say plainly if it isn’t.

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