Profit engineering

Profit-engineered AI systems for manufacturing.

The right information, to the right person, at the right time, from first enquiry to final margin. I spent 23 years inside manufacturing plants before I started building these.

Take the free assessment →

For manufacturing plants of 100 to 2,000 people: foundries, forging, machining, component and assembly plants.

Free assessments

Where does your company stand?

Two short checks. Enter your work email at the end to see your result.

Profit maturity assessment

12 questions across price, cost, throughput and cash. See which of five stages you are at, from Reactive to Autonomous, and where to start.

Take the 3-minute assessment →

AI fit check

Does your business really need AI? Pick your work areas, grouped by function, and get an honest verdict for each, your decision speed, and the yearly cost of non-value-added office time.

Take the AI fit check →

How I work

Start small, on your own data, and decide on evidence.

Start with a free assessment. Then a 2-week audit on the lever that leaks most. You decide on evidence, not on a proposal.

Take the assessment →

1. Free assessment3 minutes

Take the profit maturity assessment or the AI fit check. You see where you stand, which profit lever is weakest, and where AI would actually pay back.

2. Audit2 weeks, on your own data

I map one process that hurts and you get a working prototype on your own data, with a written estimate of the value. Fixed fee, agreed after the free assessment. You keep the prototype and the estimate whether or not we continue.

3. BuildOne system in production

One system in production, connected to your ERP or MES, with your team trained to run it. Typically 8 to 12 weeks.

4. Run & ImproveEvery month

Monitoring, tuning and new rules each month, with the result measured against the baseline from the audit.

What I’ve built

Most consultants hand over a report. I build the system that fixes it.

Grouped by the profit lever each one fixes, with where it ran and what changed.

Price

Market intelligenceA weekly briefing on customers, competitors and capacity

Public sources read every week, condensed into one line on what each item means for your plant. Built on the marketing-intelligence and business-insights function I set up from zero for an engineering exporter to the US and Europe.

GTM agentsResearched, ranked accounts and drafted outreach every week

Your team spends its time on conversations, not on research. Built on 20 years of key-account and export work with Tier 1 and OEM customers.

Cost

Shop-floor MESMachine-to-shipment traceability, with downtime and scrap by cause

Ties each part to its tool, machine, shift and material lot, with live OEE and downtime and scrap by cause. Supervisors see exceptions, not raw data.

Built for a casting plant: hourly production reports, shots, OK parts, rejects, scrap and ingot weight, downtime and corrective actions, in one system with live dashboards and an audit trail. Runs beside the ERP under the ISA-95 model.

PPAP verificationEach PPAP element checked before the customer sees it

Checks every PPAP element against the customer's requirements and against the other elements: drawing characteristics against control plan, PFMEA and dimensional results. Lists exactly what to fix before the package goes out.

Cut PPAP review and turnaround time by 50% on programmes I governed, across $25M+ of casting, forging and machining launches for Tier 1 and OEM customers.

Doc intelligenceEvery supplier invoice checked and routed to the right approver

Every supplier invoice is read, its key data pulled out and matched to the purchase order and receipt, and it goes to the right approver. Mismatches are flagged before payment.

In production for two years at a manufacturer operating in India and the US: 350+ supplier invoices a month across 3,500+ unstructured documents, 20 hours a week of manual work removed, and an audit trail that recovered a seven-figure tariff refund.

Throughput

S&OP planningOne weekly plan for sales, purchasing and production

Turns the sales outlook into a weekly plan that is feasible in production, purchasing and machine capacity. Sits beside your ERP; nothing is replaced.

The planning method behind it cut airfreight cost by 30% through demand-driven scheduling at one plant, and lifted on-time-in-full from 65% to 88% in three months at another.

Programme managementEvery launch scored for risk weekly, before a gate slips

Tracks every APQP programme against its gates, scores execution risk each week with a patent-pending method, and flags the few tasks that will move the launch date while there is still time to act.

The stage-gate framework behind it governed 40+ concurrent launch programmes at 95% on-time-in-full. Earlier, the same method delivered a $15M greenfield plant in 8 months and a dozen $2M–$10M programme turnarounds.

Cash and margin

Profit engineeringMargin by part and by customer, and where it leaks

Real margin by part, customer and machine, with a bridge from quoted to actual margin that names the biggest leak: scrap, cycle time, freight or material.

Built from the quote-to-shipment data of casting, forging and machining programmes I governed. The free assessment above is its first step.

About me

I've spent 23 years where a manufacturing company's growth is won or lost: the shop floor, the new-part launch and the supply chain.

My work has been turning constraints into capacity, late launches into on-time ones, and scattered data into numbers leadership trusts.

I wrote Empowered, a book on the Theory of Constraints, and created a patent-pending method for predicting programme risk. Today I build that experience into AI systems that run a manufacturing business from first enquiry to final margin.

Built on enterprise platforms: Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Anthropic Claude and OpenAI models. Model-agnostic, including open models that run fully on your premises.

Newsletter

Margin Factor

Making factories more profitable with AI.

Every two weeks: one profit leak I have seen inside a factory, what it was costing, and the system that closed it. Written for owners, founders, CEOs, CFOs and anyone responsible for a P&L.

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