Do you worry about eminent business failure?

We help companies turn around business failure… but you must be decisive in proportion to your urgency to benefit from this coaching….

We worked with a large contract machine shop who was just on the edge of their bank pulling their credit line, which would have resulted in their eminent bankruptcy.  Each month, when their banker asked how they were doing, they told him what they were doing because of our coaching… & he gave them another month… or 2.  Their productivity became so high, that within 9 months, they had their highest profitability month ever, by more than 3 times, and paid all their Accounts/Payable down to 60 days and, for the first time in years, dropped off of COD deliveries from their main suppliers.  (People who have been there will appreciate not having any more COD material deliveries… having to schedule your jobs by who you could afford to pay cash for materials… today!) Then, they duplicated that profitability level the next month and wrote off several years of bad debt! The Results: peace, prosperity & steady profitability each month in place of ceaseless fear and scrambling.

Do you ever worry about your business failing during an economic downturn?

We help firms prepare to survive downturns by significantly increasing their competitive delivery, quality, innovation, efficiency and profitability performance.  Downturns are a game, not of the first one wins, but of the last one dies!

With our coaching, a custom kitchen cabinet firm cut both their throughput time and their work-in-process inventories by 50%, within two and a half months.  Their production speed and flexibility increased so much, that within a year, they were calling their client’s, on-site construction supervisors two to three weeks ahead of their initial delivery date to see if their project was ahead, on time or behind schedule so they could then change their own, in-plant production scheduling to deliver exactly on their client’s current, actual  schedule versus their initially projected schedule.  Among other things, this reduced their Working Capital requirements by dropping the time between when they paid for material and labor and when they got paid for them from weeks to days.  Results:

1) They switched from financing their company via growth-based cash flow while running in the red for 10 years (Seriously!) to becoming solidly profitable.

2) They also said that they survived and thrived in the 2008-2011 recession “while their competitors were dropping like flies” because of their project with us!

Suggestions & Recommendations

Our most effective response to your concerns depends largely on how urgent your situation is. For example, how near you are to bankruptcy or other dire consequences.

If your situation is pressing, then check the schedule or just call us for a free 30 minute Zoom consultation to evaluate if working together could benefit you in time.  These methods have worked for all of our clients who execute on what we mutually agree is their clear path forward.  We won’t know if we can help you until we talk to you.  We recommend watching this 100 minute video which is an overview of much of the Resource Tab material on this site to most efficiently utilize the 30 minute Zoom consultation.

If your situation is less eminently dire, then you can watch the video and then call or schedule a free 30 minute consultation.

We will provide you with the Member Tab passwords after you have read the Resource Tab materials.  We find that people who lack either direct instruction from us or the knowledge they gain from studying the Resource Tab materials get confused when they study the Member Tab materials and they don’t really get the most out of those materials if they just skip there first.  These teaching methods are a sequential process and that is largely why the Member Tab is password protected: for your sustainable learning & growth.

Yes, these methods really do work. However, they require engagement and execution as stated in both of the cases above.  The business leader in each of these cases was decisive and their teams executed the recommendations very quickly.  If your situation is urgent, but you engage & execute well, then there is much more hope that you can turn your situation around. If you and/or your team struggle with engagement and execution, then, if you are open to the discussion, we may have to explore other options to turn your firm around.

We honestly wish you and your team the very best of luck & may God bless you in your efforts on behalf of all those involved.

Have you ever felt like there was always a line of pilgrims outside your door, awaiting answers… and solutions?

We work with business leaders to throttle down their interruptions from a fire hose to a trickle!

We unloaded the Plant engineer of a large 3000+ SKU machine shop from his 6+ “urgent” interruptions a day.  There were often 2-3 people lined up outside his door, not doing their assignments, but seeking answers on their immediate assignments, which chronically disrupted his work on specifying processes for new parts.

During the project, we developed “Part process update tools” which were to be applied on each SKU as they were “Pulled” by their specific customer.  By faithfully applying these pre-job & end-of-job procedures to create & update  “Standard Work Definitions” per SKU through the next 12 months, his chronic interruptions gradually and then completely dissolved!  The line outside his office  disappeared. Oh, and both productivity and profitability significantly increased because the machinists who had previously been “Pilgrimaging” to his door… weren’t!

Prior to widely-applied Standard Work, it was impossible for an apprentice, a beginning craftsman, to regularly succeed at even the simpler higher frequency parts. No Way!  Consequently, this client was overpaying for these parts in the form of overskilled labor.

As a result of creating and updating Standard Work, this client was able to successfully develop their labor force “from the ground up” in a very tight,  skilled-labor market.  As a bonus result, this client was able to progress from 0 to 4 apprentice machinists within a year.

We taught the Plant Engineer at a pool-cover manufacturer the same tricks… to the dissolution of his own line of “Pilgrims.”

Have you ever felt buried in ceaseless paperwork?

We work with business leaders who want significantly less routine paperwork!

We “found” 10 hours a week, conservatively, for the COO of a large aqueous chemical firm by running a Pain x Frequency Analysis on the sources of the piles of unfinished paperwork in his office that he viewed as “just part of the job.”  These piles were literally on and under his desk, in the corner and on shelves in his office.  Following the analysis, he was able to identify a number of inbound paper-work streams that were obsolete, so he stopped the creation of these sources.  (Yes, he was paying his clerical staff to produce these paper-work streams!)  There were other streams that he could delegate… so he did.  And there were some that were not worth the opportunity cost of either the COO’s time or the time of his staff so he just stopped doing them so both he and they could focus on much more profitable opportunities!  And no, this is not an uncommon situation!

While eliminating 15 hours per week of the General Consul’s 80–90-hour work week for a natural veterinary food-supplements firm, we decreased the time between the initial, marketable-idea disclosure of a researcher in the firm to when the General Consul applied for a Provisional Patent to develop it from 2+ years to less than 8 weeks.

This project had a very large unexpected bonus.  The prior Disclosure-to-Provisional-Patent process was fill of interruptions & hassle for the disclosing researchers to hand-hold their ideas through the 2 year process. So, as it turned out, they only disclosed their best ideas to the General Consul.  The new 2-months-to-Provisional-Patent removed the hassle of disclosing ideas from the (highly paid) researchers.  Result: for the first time in company history, the General Consul received many, many more newly disclosed ideas than the firm could possibly develop in a year & they had pick the best ones & create a “Trade Secrets” repository for future years!!! (The firm began growing rapidly after that.) Please see the Case Study

We decreased the time between when parts arrived at the receiving dock for a cleaning equipment firm to payment for those parts from 60-90 days down to 5-7 days in 5 weeks!  Whereupon their vendors responded with better prices and terms because nobody else paid consistently in 7 days.  As a delightful, though unanticipated additional outcome of this project, we eliminated 15 hours a week of painful phone calls that our client had been doing for years and thought was just part of the job. These were on deliveries with shipping problems that were 60-90 days past due for payment.  After implementing the same methods in his Receiving-to-Accounts Payable process that had already been done in Production, he dropped to 2-3 calls per week on items that were 5-7 days since receipt of goods.  Finally, he was talking exclusively to his vendor’s Customer Service staff instead of their Collections Departments!  Oh, and we eliminated the need for his own Freight Damage Remediation Department as an additional bonus!  See the Case Study for more information.

Suggestions & Recommendations

Both chronic interruptions and paperwork mountains frequently stem from a business growing from where the founders and management team could actually be everywhere needed to make the necessary smooth-flow-producing decisions to where, now, due to growth, they just can’t be in all of those places every time!

When the organization was smaller, the founder or perhaps the founder & their core management team WERE the value producing and directing system! Then, while their sales and organization grew, they never took sufficient opportunity to systematize their operation because they gradually had to run faster and faster just to keep up with day-to-day requirements, much less year-to-year or decade-to-decade responsibilities!  And now… they just can’t keep up!  Does this sound familiar?

The needed decisions typically fall into 3-4 classes by frequency:

Generally, the issue is that the management team has never organized and standardized the Routine or Common decision types, or for that matter, even recognized them as fundamentally different skill levels than the Rare to Unique decisions.  Therefore, in the absence of Standard Work, the management team are making way too many of high frequency decisions at the expense of the longer-term strategic decisions.

Our recommended approach is to sort decisions by “Decision Frequency”, then standardize the Routine and then the Common ones, in highest-remaining Pain X Frequency order, so they CAN be safely and successfully delegated and managed.   As you engage & execute this recommendation, the management team will primarily have the Rare decisions, suited to their higher skill & responsibility levels, and the Executive Team will have primarily Rare to Unique decisions, suited to their unique positions and skills.

Please read the Pain X Frequency page first and then go back and study the Resources Tab pages.  If you want a quick overview of the Resources Tab pages before studying them in detail, you may consider watching and taking notes on this 100-minute video.

Then, upon finishing the Resources Tab pages as explained in the “Suggestions & Recommendations” of the prior section, should you wish to continue, we will provide the passwords to the Members Tab content upon request.

If you would like further assistance, call us or check the schedule for a free 30-minute consultation.

Good luck and may you be successful at systemically reducing your interruptions and hassles!

Have you ever felt that your firm has hit a financial ceiling, that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to break through?

We help firms break through and invade their industries… routinely.

Increased operating profit for a  cleaning equipment company by <1000% and plant “Throughput” (operational revenue produced by delivering the value they sold) by over 100% in 3 years without increasing plant size.  We also decreased their Fabrication Department average throughput time from 2-3 weeks to 24 hours See Case Study 1 & Case Study 2.

Do you ever feel like you are not getting the efficiency and responsiveness you would like from your investment in production…? Like no matter how hard you work to “move the needle” that it always sags back?

We routinely reduce “Throughput Time” – the time between when you start to produce the value you have sold & when you deliver & install it – by 50%, and sometimes up as high as 80 to 90%, all the while improving quality, flexibility & profitability!

For an exploratory-drilling-diamond-bit manufacture, we reduced replenishment times for high volume items from 10 days to 3 days. Urgent items would clear production in 4 hours… without active expediting.  See the Single Page Result & the Case Study.

For a custom pool cover manufacturer, we decreased throughput time for fabric pool cover fabrication from 1.5 days to 45 minutes while using only ½ the man-hours per cover and 75% of the floor space. We also dropped confirmed-order-to-shipping throughput time from 5 days to 2 days with urgent items shipping in 1 day.  See the Single Page Result.

Suggestions & Recommendations

Our experience is that struggling manufacturing and service firms frequently have sufficient or even excess capacity and that they are suffering from unrecognized constraints in one or more of these 3 areas:

Physical Production / Service Flows – What they actually do to produce value.

Information Flows – How they direct, control & track everything from initial client/customer contact through value creation, delivery, installation, service, collection & follow-up Customer Service.

Problem Solving Flows – Where they conceive, create, provision and secure their product and/or service offerings and delivery processes.  Not only are unrecognized constraints in the Problem Solving Flows the most insidiously hidden & often the most expensive constraints to solve, they are also the most long-term profitable and productive constraints to solve… by quite a margin.

In the name of “Just-git-it-done” on a production schedule, workers have developed workarounds in both electronic & physical workspaces throughout their entire processes to deal with these unrecognized systemic constraints.  As firms actually recognize and solved these “Flow Constraints”, a great many of the “required” workarounds would no longer be needed & the resources and time they take to fix their process over and over again, “this-time-only”, would very naturally just fall to the  bottom line.

Heads up: these constraints are not all created equal!  Some of them not only pay back the most… by far… but they also produce more peace and profit more quickly than other constraints.  If you could see them, you would have already fixed them!  Fixing them is the usually fun, though honestly, sometimes frustrating part.  Finding them without the right tools is very frustrating… the needle in the haystack problem.  That is why this site exists!

First, we suggest you read the “How to Optimize Your Business from Concept to Collection – Workshop” page, gather note-taking materials and then use them while watching the 100 minute video referenced on the page to learn why and how to identify the biggest return opportunities within your firm.

Next, we suggest you read the Resources Tab pages & especially the Resources > Tool Box pages such as the

• The Magnet Layout Tool,
• The Separate High Volume Processes From Low Volume Processes Tool – this is one that causes large problems for a lot of firms,
• The Pain X Frequency Tool and
• The Kanban Visual Inventory Tool.

Next, if you just skipped to those, we suggest you go back and read the Resources Tab pages.  These are basic process design tools that are taught, largely, in Industrial Engineering… NOT in business education.  They should be taught in business education because they are NEEDED in business education, but they are not.   That’s why they are on this site.  (Mr. Ward was Operations & Project Management faculty at 3 different colleges/universities.)

Whereas these, and subsequent, client-specific methods have worked very well for our clients (see the Why Us Tab), we don’t know if you working with us will help you until we talk with you. Would it be worth 30 minutes of your time to find out?  If so, then check the free 30 minute consultation schedule or call us at (801) 979-6787.

Have you ever felt that if you could just find and turn around… something… that just seemed to elude you… that your firm would turn around as well?

We work with firms who struggle to “turn the corner” to peace, prosperity & profit, with firms who want to produce more in their same space in less time at greater profit.

We took an exploratory diamond drill bit client who, following team-based tools training, implemented multiple projects within 14 months which increased plant throughput by 260% while finding more than 40% of their production floor space.  Incidental effects of these projects include reducing “paper handlers” by 80% while tripling Finished Goods turns & cutting production-start-to-finish time from 10 days to 2 days with urgent items clearing production, from start to finish, in 4 hours… with no management expediting – it was built into the system!  Within 2 years after the project, plant staff increased their throughput by another 140% using methods we taught them.  This 400% production increase was done with an eventual increase of just 30% in direct labor and with 0% more production floor space. Essentially, their production velocity quadrupled!  See the Single Page Result & the Case Study.

We have a cleaning equipment client who increased operating profit by <1000% and plant throughput (operational revenue produced by delivering the value they sold) by over 100% in 3 years without increasing plant size.  See the Single Page Result & Case Study 1 and Case Study 2.

We performed the pre-construction process analysis, equipment specification & layout for a new Cultured Marble Countertop & “tub & shower surround” plant.  By changing the shape of the building-to-be and by relocating it on the land lot, we not only halved production’s required footprint from the full proposed building of 120,000 square feet to 60,000 square feet, but we also mitigated a safety issue by dividing the infrequent receiving dock semi-tractor and trailer traffic from the shipping dock all-day-long, small, construction-site-specific  delivery truck traffic.  See the Case Study.

A custom kitchen cabinetry firm was not only able to change from operating in the RED to operating in the BLACK, but they did it while slashing their work-in-process inventory by >50% and eventually reducing their leased footprint by 1/3! See the Case Study.

We trained a wood mill client’s supervision to manage their operation by its natural constraints resulting in a 200% INCREASE in throughput, and revenue within 18 months, with 0% increase in their footprint & <20% increase in their labor force.

Do you ever feel like you’re throwing darts at delivery dates? Is it anybody’s guess as to when product is going out the door?

We bring order to this chaos.

We dropped Confirmed-order-to-shipping throughput time from 5 days to 2 days for a pool cover production plant with urgent items shipped in 1 day.  See the Single Page Result.

We dropped maximum days late for a large, custom,  foundry/machine shop from 900+ days late (no kidding!) to 100 days late in 12 months!

Have your ever felt like you were working in a strait jacket in your production spaces or that you were stumbling over your production with chaos everywhere?

We work with manufacturers whose plants are bulging at the seams!  We regularly “find” 10% to 20% of the floor space, plant wide during the transition to much more orderly production with less hassle and interruptions and much greater profitability. Honestly, these results are typically done on the way to addressing the prior issues in this “What makes you Nuts” FAQ.

We “found” 35% of the production floor of an exploratory diamond drill bit plant.

We “Found” 20% of the production floor of a cleaning equipment company… it had been hiding for more than 10 years.

We enabled an annual sales increase of $1.6 million by designing and supervising the installation of a 60,000 square foot furniture finishing and assembly plant including work-in-process and finished inventory, assembly production cells, paint booths, an explosion-proof paint storage vault and an overhead-paint-finish conveyor.

And, as cited in earlier sections (in case you just skipped to this one):

We trained wood mill supervision to manage operation by its natural constraints resulting in 200% throughput, and revenue increase within 18 months.

A custom kitchen cabinetry firm was able to not only slash their work-in-process inventory & turn from Red to Black ink, but they did it while eventually reducing their leased footprint by 1/3!

As stated, there are Case Studies & Single Page Results for many of these cases already referenced above.  For more cases as well as what our clients say about us, see the Why Us Tab.

Do you ever feel that the things you need for production are moving shortages, that if it’s not one thing then it’s another?

We take out this variable for our clients by helping them see their inventory needs more clearly to reduce and eliminate shortages both internally and as much as possible within their supply chain.

300% increase in 55-gallon drum washing throughput with 1/3rd the staff, in 1/3 the footprint while bringing the drum-washing operation indoors to maintain throughput performance in all seasons.

This client had a campus of 3 buildings with large, expensive aqueous chemical mixing tanks that were sized to fill railroad tankers and semi-tractor tanker trucks for customers in different markets. Each of these facilities included large & expensive heating and cooling equipment to enable the mild to intense chemical reactions produced in the tanks. Sadly, the proportion of their customers who wanted product in drums vs. tanker trucks or rail cars had grown so much that the tactical schedules in these very expensively equipped buildings were constantly being slipped due to shortages of washed 55 Gallon drums! Drum washing was choking production for this firm’s clients in the markets affected by those 3 buildings!

Hence the focus on this particular project as their whole-lot-wide central constraint. As you go through this site, you will see multiple examples of finding and relaxing central constraints to increase efficiency and reduce variation and thus increase overall output in entire production systems: finding and fixing “Sequential Central Constraints” is the core of becoming faster, better, more flexible, and more cost efficient & profitable all at the same time.

Absorbed 300% increase in orders, reduced footprint 45%, reduced personnel 28% (via natural attrition… we no longer needed to replace staff as they left) of architectural signage operation that had been plagued before we arrived with orders being delayed by constantly shifting shortages of stock, interior-building signs.

Are you swimming in work-in-process and finished goods inventory?

We work with firms who want to use their money more efficiently by reducing their throughput times by at least 50% and up to 90%, so they don’t have to finance, keep, service, or (all to often) obsolete the inventory that they presently have. They can service their clients with much less required inventory, working capital & footprint at greater profitability by being much more responsive to client’s actual “Pull of Value.”

We decreased both throughput time & WIP inventories by 50% for a custom kitchen cabinet plant in 2 1/2 months. Within a year, they virtually eliminated their in-plant, custom, finished goods inventories by calling every site supervisor 2-3 weeks ahead of scheduled delivery to see when they REALLY wanted their deliveries: as agreed in the pre-construction contract or later or even earlier! With this information, they scheduled plant production so finished goods could be handled once: right into the covered delivery trailer! Applying methods we taught them, this client reduced their leased footprint by 1/3 within 2-3 years.

Applying similar methods we emptied 60% of the floorspace of a custom hard-wood door manufacturing plant while significantly boosting their cash-flow and dropping their throughput time.

Do you ever wonder if you and your staff could learn and apply these methods?

In Fall 2008, Mr. Ward required and coached 27 get-your-fingernails-dirty-by-repairing-real-companies projects  involving 120+ undergraduate University of Utah Operations Management students.  Some results:

25% sustainable monthly profitability increase while cutting the wait time to be seated on Friday and Saturday evening in half at a Chinese Restaurant in 1 month.

Order fulfillment time dropped from 3 to 1 1/2 weeks for emergency food storage and camping equipment firm in 2 months.

37% increase in average monthly revenue for scrap book publisher in 2 1/2 months.

Fastest ever commercial real estate loan rate-lock down from 45 to 34 days in 2 months.

These methods are straight forward for those who will engage and execute.

Are the entrances to these results all wildly different, or do they all start in the same way?

In fact, all of these results, including the student results, flowed from THE SAME PROVEN PROCESS.  This process centers on finding and relaxing sequential, company-wide, central constraints.  This means finding the biggest, single thing blocking company-wide growth, prosperity and peace… and then fixing it.   And then finding and fixing the next one… and the next one… and the next one… and so on.  Sequential-central-constraint analysis and repair provides each client with their specific path to diagnose and permanently fix the root causes of their present pain.

This PROVEN PROCESS also answers why the numbers in the results on this webpage are so high: when you actually find and relax the company-wide central constraint, more of what that entire company was created for actually happens!  Then the next one… and the next one… and so on!  We simply focused and coached clients on the sequence of most important things.  Again, this is not a rocket science approach and can be taught and learned by any organization able to engage and execute.  Straight forward.

Here is the link to our page with the 100 minute Video Workshop called, “How to Optimize Your Business from Concept to Collection” along with instructions on how to get the most from the workshop.   Again, we have taught this workshop to many clients, non-profits & university students.  And now we offer it to you for… FREE.   Read the short page of instructions, prepare to take notes & have at it!

Take me to the VIDEO

These tools have worked for all of our clients who engage & execute.  However, until we look at YOUR particular situation, we don’t know how well, or along exactly what path they will work the best for you.  Would it be worth 30 minutes of your time to further explore if working together would be mutually beneficial?

Check the schedule for a complementary 30 minute consultation or just call for an appointment to see if these tools can retrieve you from YOUR WITS END!