For manufacturers

Every quote, every late order, every problem still lands on your desk.

We help you set up how the office runs so it works with the shop floor, not against it. We don’t touch how you make the product.

Take the free scorecard About six minutes
Written by

Operator. Ran a 100-person manufacturing company, now COO for owner-led small businesses.

01 Where the week goes

Sound familiar?

  • 01A customer calls you, furious, because the product they received isn’t the quality they needed.
  • 02People keep asking when their order will be ready, and there’s no system that shows the status.
  • 03Your production manager walks in: “Hey, I don’t have any orders. What’s going on?”
  • 04You check every product and every shipment yourself.
  • 05You finish an order, look at the numbers, and you made no money on it, because something wasn’t priced properly.
  • 06Every bigger quote waits for you to set the price.

02 The numbers

Why manufacturing punishes guesswork

Manufacturing is a numbers game.

Energy can rewrite your unit costs inside a year.

US natural gas at Henry Hub averaged $2.03 per MMBtu in 2020 and about $6.45 in 2022, more than three times as much. In Europe, the 2022 average was nearly eight times the 2016–2020 average. A jump like that changes everything about your pricing: unit cost, unit economics, and whether you’re still making money on the products you make.

Source · US Energy Information Administration (US) · International Energy Agency (Europe)

US natural gas price, Henry Hub
Annual average · $/MMBtu · 2020–2025
2.0320203.8920216.4520222.5320232.1920243.5220252.0320203.8920216.4520222.5320232.1920243.522025
2022, the spike 2020 level

If your prices were set in 2020, check them against this.

2020 2.03 · 2021 3.89 · 2022 6.45 · 2023 2.53 · 2024 2.19 · 2025 3.52

Source · US Energy Information Administration

Manufacturing is very cash-flow intense.

You plan months ahead, so cash is tied up in stock, and your clients want payment terms from you. Run short and a supplier will tell you they’re not sending raw materials until the invoice is paid. Then the whole production stops.

You can’t run out of cash, not even for a day.

Thomas Machura

03 The real problem

You’re running two companies at once

Running a manufacturing business is running two companies at the same time. You have the factory on one side and the office on the other, and it turns into an “us versus them” kind of vibe, with factory people and office people fighting each other. It’s a disconnect between the factory and the people in the office.

For you, it’s one flow from A to Z: from idea to product to manufacturing to selling. You see the full picture and you understand it. What fixes it is a very clear communication of direction and vision to everybody in the company.

Two people reviewing plans together at a workshop bench

One business, not two.

04 What we build with you

Six parts, in order, around your plant

If you want to scale and have a helicopter view of your business, you’re not going to get it without proper systems and structure. This is the full system, in order.

In this order · 01 → 06

Ideally, each part stacks on top of the other. It’s an oversimplification: nothing is perfect in business. It’s a guide.

  1. 01

    Foundation

    The systems every business needs. In manufacturing you’ve got product management, and project management for clients, and you need a place to work on that. There are a lot of bills of materials and quality control files, so you need an information management system. And more than ever, the factory and the office need a place to talk.

  2. 02

    Direction

    The vision and mission of the business. In manufacturing especially, the floor and the office have to be aligned and crystal clear on being one team, going towards the same goal.

  3. 03

    People

    Your production manager understands production and designs it. Sales and marketing have a very different job and a very different skill set. They need to work hand in hand.

  4. 04

    Rhythm

    A weekly meeting with the production manager and the sales manager in the same room, to talk about what’s going on, quality control, and constant feedback.

  5. 05

    Process

    All the processes written down, especially quality control and what good looks like.

  6. 06

    Data

    Unit economics in one place, easily accessible to everybody within a few clicks, and a cash-flow forecast.

See the full 12 weeks →

The founder: “I don’t need it. I’ve got everything in my head.”

If it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist.

Thomas Machura

05 One path for every order

From quote to customer, the same way every time

Once you map it out, every order goes through this pipeline, and it’s much easier to grow. You don’t need to check every single product or every shipment, because it goes through a checklist and people trained on it. Then you can think about automating, so there’s less and less human error.

  1. Quote.

    The factory estimates the cost. Sales sets the price, never below the floor price the owner set: a minimum profit per unit after production cost and overhead.

  2. Accept.

    Check capacity. A full line isn’t the goal. A low-margin job can block the line for a better one.

  3. Produce.

    Against the production manual and a golden sample: a physical product the line is checked against.

  4. Quality control.

    A checklist signed off before anything leaves the floor.

  5. Account manager.

    Confirms the order is complete and right for that customer.

  6. Invoice and ship.

    Then the customer.

06 The 12 weeks

Built to fit around a running plant

  • 01About four hours a week, combining videos and live sessions.
  • 02Either you take the program yourself, or you send your right hand or your best head of ops to learn how to put it in place.

By week 12, your quarterly priorities are set, your weekly meeting is running and your weekly numbers are live. If they aren’t, we keep working with you, free, until they are.

The guarantee →

07 Fit

This is for you if

  • You own a manufacturing business of roughly 10 to 50 people and $2–20M in revenue.
  • As a rule of thumb, you still recognise the faces of the people who work for you, and you know the work they do.
  • The factory and the office are pulling in different directions.
  • Every price, delay and quality question still comes back to you.

It isn’t for you if

  • You need help with the production line itself: six sigma, kanban, layout.
  • It feels corporate: five levels of management, or a hired CEO who isn’t setting the direction.
  • You work in a highly regulated field like medicine, health, chemicals, security, or anything related to government.
  • You build high-tech products.
A man and a small child walking through a garden at the end of the day

Be free to build what matters.

08 Questions

Questions owners ask

Will you set up my production?

No. Your production manager understands production and designs it, and we’re not going to touch that, or change how you run it. What we build with you is the system for the whole business, where production makes the product you sell. Your production manager is an integral part of it.

Do I need an ERP?

For production, yes. You need a system that tracks orders, raw materials, labour cost and everything else. That’s non-negotiable. But a plant of 100 people is very different from one of 10 or 15, and ERP systems are extremely expensive. With the technology we have now, a small plant can use an internal tool that’s good enough, without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.

My team will push back. Will this be forced on them?

We can’t push anything on the team. The team has to be on board, so we sell them the idea that this makes everybody’s life better, using a proper change-management approach.

Do I need to hire an IT person?

No. But you definitely need a smart admin person.

It’s all in my head. Do I really need this?

There’s a golden rule: if it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist. If it’s only in your head, then from a business perspective it doesn’t exist. If everything is in your head, the whole business depends on you being there every day. That’s what we work on fixing.

There are two of us: one runs the floor, one runs sales. Does this still fit?

Yes, it’s a common setup. Usually one partner is focused on the factory, the shop-floor guy, and the other pushes sales and marketing and is the face of the business. You have very different jobs and very different skill sets, and you need to work hand in hand so you don’t create internal wars.

Will this make us more money?

Nobody can guarantee more money. But without systems and structure you can’t scale, and staying where you are means you’re not going to make more. Systems and structure give the business the capacity to grow, take more orders, and focus on the products with the most margin.

Is a business that depends on me worth less when I sell?

Usually, yes. Valuers call it a key person discount. The IRS’s own guidance on valuing private companies (Revenue Ruling 59-60) says losing the manager of a one-man business can depress its value, especially when no trained staff can take over, and the US Tax Court has applied such a discount (Estate of Furman, 1998). At the same revenue, a business with structure is easier for a buyer to value, and easier to hand on.

How long do you want to keep doing it this way?

The scorecard takes about six minutes and shows which of the six parts is holding your business back.

Take the free scorecard Or join the waitlist →

Sources

  1. US Energy Information Administration, Henry Hub natural gas spot price, annual — eia.gov
  2. International Energy Agency, Gas Market Report, Q1 2023 (2022 average TTF price) — iea.org
  3. Internal Revenue Service, Revenue Ruling 59-60 (valuation of closely held businesses)
  4. US Tax Court, Estate of Furman v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 1998-157