Fractional COO · Manufacturing & Products
Operating leadership that runs the floor, not just the spreadsheet
We embed a senior operating leader inside your plant to document how work actually gets done, make production performance visible, and run the cadence that holds it together. Your team stays in the driver's seat and ends the engagement more capable than when we started.
The Outcome
What embedded operating leadership does for you
Not another advisor — a senior operator inside your business, installing systems and running them with your team.
Production runs to a documented standard
The tribal knowledge in your lead operators' heads becomes written SOPs and work instructions anyone on the floor can follow and improve.
You can see throughput, quality, and OTD daily
A live operations dashboard replaces the end-of-month surprise, so bottlenecks surface while there is still time to act on them.
One cadence connects sales, production, and shipping
A weekly operating rhythm ties demand to capacity so the plant stops lurching between overtime and idle time.
How we work
Here’s what we’d install — and run with your team
We won’t hand you an org-chart deck and disappear. What follows is exactly what we’d build inside a business like yours — SOPs, dashboards, and an operating cadence — and how we’d prove it’s working. We set an operational baseline first, install the systems on the tools you already run, and measure against that baseline, so you know what each fix is worth before we build it.
Who it’s for: Owner-led and lower-mid-market manufacturers, fabricators, and physical-product companies (roughly $3M-$75M revenue) where the founder or plant manager is still the single point of failure for scheduling, quality, and firefighting, and growth is outrunning the systems that got them here.
The Core Systems
The operating system we install on your floor
Every plant already has a way of working. Our job is to make that way explicit, measurable, and repeatable, then fix the one constraint costing you the most, working shoulder-to-shoulder with your team rather than handing you a binder and leaving.
SOPs & Process Documentation
Work instructions that outlive your best operator
The problem: critical setups, changeovers, and quality checks live only in the heads of a few veterans. When they are out, on vacation, or retire, scrap climbs and cycle times slip, and every new hire takes months to reach standard.
What we’d build: standardized work instructions and SOPs for your highest-volume and highest-variability operations, captured on the floor with the people who actually do the work, including setup sheets, changeover steps, and inline quality checkpoints, in a format your team maintains after we leave.
KPI Dashboards & Visibility
A production scoreboard you can read at a glance
The problem: you find out about a missed shipment or a quality spike after it has already cost you a customer. Data is trapped in your ERP, on whiteboards, and in a supervisor's notebook, so no one sees the whole picture in time.
What we’d build: an operations dashboard tracking the metrics that actually move your plant, throughput, on-time delivery, first-pass yield, scrap, downtime, and labor efficiency, pulled from your existing ERP or shop-floor data, with clear owners and review points so numbers drive decisions.
Operating Cadence & Accountability
A weekly rhythm that ties demand to capacity
The problem: sales promises dates the floor cannot hit, purchasing reacts late, and shipping scrambles at month-end. Without a shared cadence, every department optimizes for itself and the customer pays for it.
What we’d build: a lightweight sales-and-operations planning cadence, a daily production huddle and a weekly cross-functional review, with a standard agenda, a capacity-vs-demand view, and an action log, so issues get raised and closed on a rhythm instead of in a crisis.
Hands-On Implementation
We fix the constraint, not just diagnose it
The problem: you likely already know roughly where the bottleneck is, but no one has the bandwidth to actually re-lay-out the cell, rebalance the line, or rebuild the scheduling logic while also running daily operations.
What we’d build: hands-on implementation of the single biggest operational fix, whether that is a bottleneck workstation, a chaotic changeover, or a broken scheduling process, run as a focused improvement with your team so the gain sticks and your people own the new way of working.
More We Install
Other places we roll up our sleeves
Beyond the core build, here are common operational fixes we take on with manufacturers, each scoped against your own baseline and executed with your team, never as an outside report you are left to implement alone.
Inventory & materials discipline
Set reorder points, min/max levels, and cycle-count routines so you stop tying up cash in the wrong parts while starving the line of the right ones.
Quality management system
Stand up a practical QMS, inspection criteria, nonconformance tracking, and corrective actions, that catches defects earlier and gives you an audit-ready trail.
Production scheduling
Rebuild how jobs are sequenced and released so the floor works to a realistic, capacity-aware plan instead of the loudest customer.
Shop-floor layout & flow
Reorganize cells and material movement to cut travel, work-in-process, and the double-handling that quietly eats your margin.
Supplier & purchasing cadence
Put lead-time expectations, order cadence, and vendor scorecards in place so material shortages stop driving your schedule.
Cost & margin visibility
Build a simple job-costing view that shows which products and customers actually make money once labor, scrap, and rework are counted.
New-hire ramp & cross-training
Turn your SOPs into a training path and skills matrix so you can flex labor across the plant and shorten time-to-productivity.
The Numbers We Move
Operational levers we help you pull
Operations isn’t the goal; moving these is. We set a starting number in the audit and measure against it.
On-time delivery
A demand-to-capacity cadence and realistic scheduling so promised dates match what the floor can produce.
First-pass yield
Inline quality checkpoints and documented standard work that catch defects at the source instead of at final inspection.
Changeover time
Documented setup procedures and staged tooling so machines spend more time making parts and less time idle.
Work-in-process
Flow and scheduling changes that stop jobs from piling up between operations and freeing up floor space and cash.
Labor efficiency
Standard work, cross-training, and a skills matrix so output per labor hour rises without burning your team out.
Scrap & rework
Root-cause routines and corrective actions that turn recurring quality misses into permanent fixes.
We start by measuring your current state, today's on-time delivery, first-pass yield, changeover times, scrap rate, and throughput, from your own ERP and floor data. Every improvement is measured against that baseline, so you see real movement in your numbers rather than borrowed benchmarks or promised percentages we have no way of guaranteeing.
The Engagement
Embedded in your operation, run by your team
A fractional engagement scoped to your business — a senior operator embedded part-time to document your processes, install dashboards and an operating cadence, and implement the fixes hands-on. Not a report; real operating systems put to work.
You end more capable, not more dependent. We build the systems with your team and hand them off running, so the operation keeps working when the engagement flexes down. Priced from an hourly rate, scaling to a scoped retainer.
Every operation is different. The audit is where we find your highest-return fix.
How It Works
From operational audit to systems that run themselves
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Operational audit
We map your workflows, inventory the tools you run, and set baseline numbers so every later result has a starting line to beat.
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Systemize (SOPs)
We document your core processes into clear SOPs, so the business runs on a system instead of in your head.
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Dashboards & visibility
KPI dashboards wired to the tools you already use, so the numbers that run the business sit in one place.
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Operating cadence
A weekly accountability rhythm — the meetings, metrics, and owners that keep execution on track.
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Implement & hand off
We implement the highest-return fixes hands-on, then hand the systems off running so your team owns them.
FAQ
Manufacturing & Products — fractional-COO & operations questions
Are you going to hand us a binder and disappear?
No. We embed on your floor and build alongside your team. The documentation, dashboards, and cadence are things your people run day to day, and our explicit goal is to work ourselves out of the daily role and leave you more capable.
Do we need a modern ERP or MES for this to work?
No. We build the operating system around the data you already have, whether that is a full ERP, spreadsheets, or whiteboards. If better tooling is warranted, we help you scope it, but we do not make it a prerequisite for progress.
How is this different from a lean or Six Sigma consultant?
We use lean tools where they fit, but we are operating leadership, not a training program. We take ownership of running the cadence and implementing fixes with you, not just teaching a methodology and leaving execution to you.
Will this disrupt production while you are here?
We work around your schedule and pilot changes on a single line or cell before rolling them out. The point is to reduce firefighting, so we are careful not to create it while we improve things.
How much of your time do we get, and for how long?
It is a part-time, embedded engagement, typically a set number of days per week over a defined period. We scope the cadence and duration to your situation up front, and it flexes down as your team takes the wheel.
Can you promise a specific percentage improvement?
No, and we would be skeptical of anyone who does before seeing your operation. We set your baseline first, then target realistic gains against it and measure honestly. The results we report are your numbers, not case studies from other plants.
What if our real problem is people, not process?
Often the two are tangled together. Clear SOPs, a fair scoreboard, and a working cadence remove a lot of the friction that looks like a people problem. Where it is genuinely a role or capability gap, we help you see it clearly and address it.
Who on our team needs to be involved?
Your plant manager or operations lead, a few veteran operators, and whoever owns scheduling and quality. We build with them, not around them, because they are the ones who sustain it after we step back.
The Full Practice