Working with Manufacturing Consulting Services, Inc. FAQ
How Much?
How much time will this take?
We typically devote seven hours to each client per consulting session: 2 1/2 to 3 hours in person (or via Web conferencing) and the balance as travel or tasks relevant to the project.
This does not mean that you and your staff will have simply 2-4 hours beyond these visits. Assignments to improve your operation are still necessary to improve your operation. On a given visit, homework may be a few minutes. On other visits, homework may be several hours or may even cross several consulting visits. It just depends on what your central constraint is.
Clients will spend 2 1/2 to 3 hours in person (or via Web conferencing) per session, usually twice per month. Clients will also need to allow for time doing their agreed-on assignments in preparation for our next meeting. Time devoted to the work varies considerably–but as the old adage goes: “the more you give, the more you receive.”
Plan to set aside between 1-5 hours between meetings to focus on completing the agreed-upon assignment(s). Sometimes there is more, sometimes there is less. It all depends on the specific nature of the central constraints on which we are working.
NOTE: We have found that clients who do their homework advance much more quickly than clients who do not, or who only do part of it per visit. This is intensive! We are talking about the survival, profitability and growth of your operation, which impacts all of the people that work in your operation, as well as the customers and vendors relying on your operation. Your ability to persevere through difficult times is what will yield your success. This is not a “hand it over to the consultant to hand you a finished package” arrangement. This is hands-on, do-it-yourself continuous improvement! Your active participation (and experiential education) is vital.
The reason we do not generally come more than two times a month is best described by a former client who once told us that we are “a lot like chocolate mousse: delicious in small amounts!”
How much does it cost NOT to engage in these process and profitability improvement methods?
Failure to find and relax your sequential central constraints is VERY expensive in both time and money. Probably the most effective way to respond to this is to refer you to testimonials from clients regarding this question. See specific testimonials regarding cost of failure to do these methods.
How much does it cost for an Introductory Training & Profit-Improvement Plan Project?
After we establish that you want to significantly grow your business, we will enter the Introductory Training Project which consists of two on-site (or by Web conferencing, if necessary) 3-hour sessions and up to four additional consulting hours for a total of 10 consulting hours.
During these sessions, we teach you and your staff how to map your business processes from Concept-to-Collection. We then refine your map to identify candidates for your present central constraint. We coach you in enumerating the underlying root causes of your most likely company-wide central-constraint candidate. Then, as time permits, we introduce you and your staff to methods of continuous process diagnostic and improvement.
By the end of the Introduction Training Sessions Project, we will have developed a high-level, Profit-Improvement Plan: essentially hunt down and eliminate your organization’s sequential central constraints in priority order! $1200USD
What happens after the Introductory Project?
We are willing to earn our way into being your growth-empowering consultancy by delivering future-improving-value with each session. We train you and your core staff via hands-on process & profit improvement methods versus bringing our own (very expensive) team to build “your process” and then just hand you a binder or electronic file to implement by yourself. Then, we facilitate your core staff implementing these methods in their own areas of responsibility… usually in central- constraint-sequence order.
So, based on the Profit-Improvement Plan outcome of the initial project, we commence on a schedule of 10 hours a month across 2 pre-scheduled visits per month to focus on your sequential central constraints. Each visit we meet in person or, as necessary, via Web conference for 2 1/2 to 3 hours. We typically pre-schedule consulting sessions in either the morning from 9:30 AM to 12 noon or in the afternoon from 2 PM to 4:30 PM Mountain Standard Time on a particular day of the week, within the first and third full Monday-to-Friday weeks of the month, for 3 consecutive months. The balance of the consulting hours are spent traveling or doing non-face time tasks relevant to your sequential central constraints.
Again, you also commit to allocate relevant staff to actually do the agreed-upon central-constraint-relaxing assignments which come up along to way… no actual change means no actual value.
Just to be clear, we are focusing on your firm being worth 3 to 10 times what it is currently worth… within 36 months. We don’t deal in 5 percent or 10 percent increments. We deal in increments of 100% increase of total firm value
At the end of the 1st 3 months, continuation will be based both on your evaluation of our value to your future and on our evaluation of your progress in completing agreed-upon assignments: we both desire to be part of legitimately growing, steadily progressing firms.
Please Contact Us for further information.