Right Tack Consulting
Insights
The reasoning behind the methods, written up. Each one explains how I think about the problem — useful whether or not we ever work together — and ends where the method begins.
Whitepaper
Inventory. It’s always inventory.
Every business needs inventory. The trouble is that every customer, product, project and change it ever took on left some behind, and whatever went wrong upstream, the warehouse is where the chickens come home to roost.
Whitepaper
How not to have millions in inventory and still disappoint the key customer
Stock high and shortages anyway is not bad luck. It is what happens when nobody owns the total. Seven moves to fix it, in order.
Whitepaper
We asked counsel to check the contract. Nobody told them what the deal was.
An agreement comes back from legal — thorough, four months late, and eighteen months on there is no clause that helps. The brief was thin for two reasons: the deal was not settled when the drafting began, and good counsel is expensive, so the background is the first thing cut. What counsel is actually asking for; the six things a brief contains; why the redline gets shorter once you say which risks you are content to carry; and the ninety-day notice period that is not an exit but a cliff with a date on it.
Whitepaper
You will support it until you decide not to.
Somebody calls about a machine you sold in 1998, and in the next ninety seconds someone decides what you owe them. With no policy that decision gets improvised, differently every time. Four support phases entered on evidence rather than sentiment; the severity threshold that rises rather than support stopping; upgrade versus update as a pricing boundary, with safety fixes always free; the end-of-life letter worth writing properly; and the ninety-day last-time buy that funds everything after it.
Whitepaper
Organize the function by horizon, not by task.
Nobody decided to stop qualifying second sources; it just stopped. A supply chain function for a business that is doubling, split by how far out each part is accountable — sourcing, procurement, logistics — with one sentence each, one published measure each, the gate that keeps new suppliers out of the back door, and the arithmetic for how many people. Segues into the organization and people method.
Whitepaper
The business shrank. The overhead did not.
The turnaround case. One part of the business carries the company, everything else loses money, and the plan still says grow out of it. Retreat to the customers and products that already pay, size the fixed cost to what that core earns at the bottom of its cycle, fund a product cadence from it, and then move one axis at a time — plus the five things not to say while you do it. Segues into the product-strategy method.
Whitepaper
Everyone has an org chart. Nobody can say what it is holding up.
How I think about structure in a fast-growth industrial business. Envisioned as a Temple. Value Creation supported by six pillars standing on a strong foundation.
Whitepaper
The forecast will be wrong. Do it anyway.
Everyone knows the number is wrong, and most teams draw the wrong conclusion from that. The plan is disposable; the planning is not. Demand carrying volume, timing and probability, supply separating what is contracted from what is merely expected, and three or four constraints modeled by month — because the binding one moves. Segues into the planning method.
Whitepaper
What should I make and what should I buy, and why?
When a critical category is concentrated, the argument narrows to buying the supplier or living with the dependency, and both get settled on unit cost. There is a third answer: own a fifth to a third of the category’s capacity, sized on the smallest volume that keeps a line alive, and use it to make everything outside it perform better. The cap as the design, the floor as arithmetic, and the downturn rule you write while everyone is calm. Segues into the manufacturing-strategy method.
Whitepaper
Meeting the Domestic Content rule is a tax question. The answer is a sourcing one.
Domestic content and the material-assistance rules look like compliance and behave like manufacturing strategy. What they do to the approved vendor list, to supplier ownership diligence nobody was doing before, to make-or-buy and plant scope — and why the part that moves your number most is usually the part with the thinnest domestic supply base. Segues into the manufacturing-strategy method.
Whitepaper
Everyone signed the plan. Nobody owns Monday.
The model runs, the investment committee approved it, and a hundred days later nothing on the floor is different. The operations half of a value creation plan: every line of the bridge walked down to a named change, the driver tree read in both directions so the orphan that will miss is found early, decision rights settled before the decisions arrive, the hundred days written as decisions and installations rather than meetings, and a cadence that holds its units through a bad quarter. Segues into the value-creation method.
Whitepaper
The roadmap is what engineering was going to build anyway
Every equipment product runs down the same three stages — only we can do it, better faster cheaper, then price — and a company that has not planned for the third does not choose how it competes there. That is what a roadmap is for. Ask why yours is the roadmap and you get a good answer for the first item; beyond that it gets fuzzy. Three sessions, a week apart at least, one scorecard for every competitor, and the value metric the customer’s own finance team would recognize. Segues into the product-strategy method.
Whitepaper
You cannot scale a product nobody has written down
The line doubles, a second source is qualified, the build moves — and the engineering definition six people carried in their heads does not come with it. A presence test rather than a maturity assessment, the seven items that cost the most when they are missing, and the two-level BOM trace that finds them in half a day. Segues into the product-definition method.
Whitepaper
They gave you a tour. You needed an audit.
A supplier visit produces impressions at a high rate and evidence at a low one, and the two feel identical while you are standing there. The prior-visit tracker as the instrument, the probes that keep finding something, and why the contract manufacturer’s line is the least reliable number in any capacity plan. Segues into the sourcing method.
Whitepaper
Before the meeting, decide whether it is a negotiation at all
Some supplier problems are negotiation problems and some are business model conflicts — they look identical across the table and need completely different solutions. The five-section pre-read, the three bridge structures, and why the walk-away column decides the meeting before it starts. Segues into the sourcing method.
Whitepaper
“Can we build more?” is the easy question.
The opportunity arrives and everyone asks “can we build more?” — the easy question. Readiness as an auditable gate: the design finished, the dull audit of parts and suppliers and process closed, the capability that survives one person leaving, and every gap sorted into a schedule you ramp through or a wall you stop and build. Segues into the ramp-readiness method.
Whitepaper
The price is already falling. Your cost has to fall faster.
You scaled and you can build more — but the selling price has been falling since you shipped, and volume alone won’t save the margin. The three stages of equipment competition, and a strategic-sourcing cost-out plan — spend map, should-cost, waves and phasing — to make cost fall faster than price and fund the jump to the next wave. Segues into the scale method.
Whitepaper
In a tight market, the supplier chooses you.
In a capacity-constrained category you compete for the supplier’s capacity, not the other way round. Earning allocation with credible demand, classifying categories with the Kraljic lens, anchor-plus-second-source sequencing, and the governance that keeps a supply position from decaying. Segues into the sourcing method.
Whitepaper
You outsourced the factory. Do not abdicate responsibility
Staying in control of something you no longer build yourself. Right-sizing the relationship, owning the BOM and the data, forecasting as credibility, and planning the divorce while you are still friends. Segues into the sourcing method.
Whitepaper
Why is everyone asking me questions?
Five design principles for a weekly report that prevents questions instead of answering them. Fixed cadence, exceptions on top, accountable escalation, a forward lookahead, and a report you can actually sustain. Segues into the planning method.
Whitepaper
How to spend two million dollars and still not know what is in your warehouse
Choosing an ERP from the operations chair. Whose problem it actually solves, buying for the company you are, configure don’t customize, the budget that is some function of pi, owning the migration, and testing the reporting before you sign. Segues into the systems method.
Whitepaper
How to spend three million dollars and still have your engineers emailing spreadsheet BOMs
PLM is a discipline, not a license. Why the definition has to exist before the tool, the boundary between PDM, PLM and ERP, the death-by-spreadsheet failure, and how to buy one in the right order. Segues into the product-definition method.
Whitepaper
It was only a small change
The engineering change process, made proportional. Request, order, notice; classify before you gate; formality that rises with commitment; a board that can actually block; one system of record, nothing verbal. Segues into the product-definition method.
Whitepaper
The cost nobody quoted is the one that picks the plant
Choosing where to build. Rank locations by what varies between your real candidates, not by what is biggest; hard costs in the model, soft costs as gates; and why the weighted scoring matrix belongs last. Segues into the manufacturing-strategy method.
Whitepaper
Own the interface, not the drawings
The procurement spectrum, and the position in the middle most people miss. Own form, fit and function — and the gate — and let the supplier own the internals. Multi-source interchangeability without a drawing vault. Segues into the sourcing method.
Whitepaper
Orders don’t taper. They fall off a cliff.
When an equipment market turns, the bullwhip makes you feel it worst and first. Committed versus cancellable, deposits as recoverable cash, protecting the suppliers you will need on the way back up, and building for the cycle. Segues into the downside method.
Origin story
Get to 100 a month
The GT Solar story. One machine a day to a hundred a month, and the 2008 cliff — where the toolkit behind most of these methods stopped being theory. Eighty-twenty, runners-repeaters-strangers, build it only once, and plan for the downside.
Method note
Stop, separate, or structure
Simplification in an industrial business is three moves, not one. Delete what is uncoupled, separate what is attached to a customer worth keeping, and build the skeleton that carries the rest.
