What you get
Each method ends with something real in your hands — a strategy, a plan, a structure standing up and running, a playbook your existing managers use on Monday.
Decide what to sell, then define exactly what you ship. Decide where you build it, who builds it, and whether you can ship it when the order lands. Then run it with visibility, install the people and the system behind it, survive the turn — and show what it was worth. Any one can be bought on its own.
What the work is for · The crown
Avoid a plan that reads beautifully and never gets done
“We have a value creation plan. Nobody can tell me what operations does differently on Monday.”
The sponsor and the CFO can build the model. You end up with the operations half of it, written in the units the investment committee already uses.
01 · Product strategy & portfolio
What to sell, and why they will buy it
“We have a roadmap, and I could not tell you why it is that one.”
Decide what features make the product because they create customer value, not what the last contact ask for. You end up with a roadmap every item on which traces back to a movement in the market.
02 · Product definition & change control
Knowing exactly what you ship
“Nobody knows which revision is current, and changes cost us money we never see.”
The bill of materials is the control artifact. You end up with a change process your managers run without me.
03 · Manufacturing strategy & footprint
Where you build it — and how you can defend the decision
“We are about to commit capital and we cannot defend what, where, or how.”
Eight stages in order, each producing one named output that gates the next. You end up with a manufacturing strategy you can take to a board and defend line by line.
04 · Sourcing, outsourcing & contract manufacturing
Who builds it, and whether the price is right
“Our contract manufacturer is running us, and we cannot tell if the price is right.”
Outsource the operation. Never outsource the knowledge of how the operation works. You end up with a sourcing strategy and a cost model that lets you argue with a quote.
05 · Scale-up & cost-down
Congratulations, you won the order. Can you build it?
Ramp readiness
“We just won the order. Can we build it?”
Readiness gates, phased ramp, decision rights. You end up with a ramp plan and an organization structure stood up behind it.
The volume arrived. The margin did not.
Cost-down planning
“We doubled the volume and gross margin went backward.” Spend map, should-cost models built bottom-up, cost-out in waves, and a phasing chart that names the month the net turns positive — with the cost-down steps written into the supply agreements while the volume is still being awarded.
06 · Planning, visibility & risk
It’s hard to make forecasts, especially about the future
Forecasting & S&OP
“Sales promised it. Nobody asked operations.”
The forecast will be wrong. The job is one plan everyone works to, and knowing within a week when it has stopped being true. Two deliverables here, and they are not the same job — one produces the plan, the other tells you when it has broken.
The market just turned. What now?
Downside planning & exposure
“Orders have stopped and nobody can tell me what we are committed to.”
Committed separated from cancellable, before you need it. You end up with a number for what a downturn actually costs you, and a sequence for unwinding it.
What all of it rests on · The foundation
Who decides when you are not in the room?
Organization & people
“Every decision still comes back to me.”
A small dedicated team beats economies of scale. Every time — that is ITW’s decentralized operating philosophy, and it holds in businesses a fraction of that size. You end up with a procurement, quality or logistics function that exists as a structure rather than as a person.
Buy the system last.
ERP, PDM & PLM
“We spent two million on the system, and I still can’t tell you what’s in the warehouse.”
Check the skeleton before you bolt on the rib. You end up with an independent, vendor-neutral read on the ERP and PLM decision — and the discipline to hold it.
Why publish the methods at all
The reasoning here is public — the sequence, the logic, why the order is what it is. The templates and models that operate it come with the engagement. Publishing the method is what makes the phone ring.
