Practice area

Operations and process

How the work actually moves through the business, where it stops, and what it costs every time it has to be done twice.

two engagements
From $10,800
six to fourteen days

“Everything takes longer than it should and I do not know why.”

Everything takes longer than it should, nobody can say why, and the honest answer is almost never that people are slow. In a business of this size the time goes into the space between the steps: work waiting for a part, an answer or a decision, work being done twice because the first version was built from the wrong information, and the same number typed into three places by three people.

None of that appears on anybody's timesheet, which is exactly why it is usually the largest single cost in the business. So we follow real jobs — not a sample, actual jobs, from the first enquiry to the paid invoice — with a stopwatch and a notebook, and write down what happens rather than what the procedure says happens. Two days of standing in the way asking obvious questions is the part clients find strange and then find useful. By the end of it there is a map of the process as it really runs, a list of every point where work stops, and a costed order in which to fix them, which matters because the fixes are not equally worth doing and the cheapest one is rarely first.

What we would actually look at

In roughly this order

A real job followed end to end, timed at every handover
Every point where work waits, and what it is waiting for
Everything that gets done twice, and what made the first version wrong
The jobs only one person can do, and what happens the week they are away
Where the same information is entered more than once
What the constraint actually is, which is usually not what everybody says it is

The engagements

What you can buy, and what it costs

Days are chargeable days. Weeks are the elapsed time, which is always longer. The fee is the first multiplied by the day rate and there is nothing else in it.

Operations and process. Days are chargeable days; weeks are how long it takes on the calendar, which is always longer. The fee is the day rate multiplied by the days and there is nothing else in it.
Engagement	Days	Over	Fee
Follow the job	eight to fourteen days	five to eight weeks	$14,400 to $25,200
Capacity and scheduling	six to ten days	four to six weeks	$10,800 to $18,000

Follow the job

$14,400 to $25,200

We follow real jobs from the first enquiry to the paid invoice, timing every step and writing down what happens rather than what the procedure says happens.

eight to fourteen days over five to eight weeks
blended day, $1,800

The first week: Two days on the floor with a stopwatch and a notebook, in the way, asking obvious questions.

What you are left holding: A map of the process as it actually runs, a list of every point where work waits or is done twice, and a costed order in which to fix them.

Capacity and scheduling

$10,800 to $18,000

How much work the business can actually take, what the real constraint is, and why the busiest week of the month is usually the one that loses money.

six to ten days over four to six weeks
blended day, $1,800

The first week: A day counting what goes through the constraint, and a day with whoever currently does the scheduling in their head.

What you are left holding: A written capacity model you can keep using, and a scheduling method your own people can run without us.

How that fee is arrived at

Blended day× eight$14,400
The same rate, at the long end× fourteen$25,200
Travel, materials and anything bought for youat cost—
What you would be quotedeight to fourteen days$14,400 to $25,200

The day rate is $1,800 and it is on the fees page. That multiplication is the whole of the pricing model: there is no retainer hidden inside it, no percentage of anything and no success fee.

Where this stops

What this is not

We are not a health-and-safety consultancy and we do not certify anything. If following a job around your floor turns up something that belongs to a regulator or an insurer, we will say so plainly and it stops being ours.

Everything we do not do, and who we send you to

A worked example

The care agency losing a week to the roster

Home care services · Three branches, about ninety carers

Two coordinators were spending most of every week rebuilding a roster by telephone, and turnover among carers was highest in the branch with the most last-minute changes.

What we did: Two days watching the roster being built, then a capacity model, then a scheduling method the coordinators wrote with us rather than were handed. Eight days over six weeks.

The whole example

Every case study on this site is a composite. Every case study on this site is an illustrative composite assembled from several businesses. No client is named, no logo appears, and there is not a single testimonial on this website attributed to a person — a fabricated one would be the one genuinely dishonest thing a consulting site can do.

Worth reading first

Why the busiest month is often the least profitable one

Every business has a month where everybody worked flat out and the numbers came back worse than the quiet month before it. There are four usual reasons and none of them is bad luck.

Read it — about eleven minutes

Questions

What does it cost?

A partner day is $2,200, a blended day is $1,800 and a consultant day is $1,400. Every project on this site is a number of days at one of those three rates, and the fee range printed against it is exactly that multiplication. The smallest piece of work here is four days.

Why do you publish your rates when almost nobody else does?

Because the alternative is that every first meeting spends twenty minutes on a question that has one number in the answer, and because a fee that is only revealed after you have explained your problems is a fee arrived at from your problems.

Is the first meeting really free?

Ninety minutes, no fee, no obligation, and no proposal at the end of it — you get an opinion. Roughly one in four ends with us saying that we are not the right thing for this, which is why we can afford to give the time away.

How long does a piece of work take?

The smallest is about three weeks and the largest runs for two years. The days and the weeks are different numbers and both are printed against every engagement, because six days spread over five weeks is what actually happens.

Operations and process · from $10,800

Start with the assessment, or telephone

The assessment takes about four minutes and gives you a written summary of what your answers suggest and which engagement addresses each thing. It is indicative and not professional advice, and it is a better opening than a blank contact form. If you would rather skip it, the telephone works and the first meeting is ninety minutes and free.

Take the assessment Call 000-000-0000