One playbook, proven plant by plant.

A few weeks on the factory floor. We map how orders, materials and information actually move from enquiry to dispatch, find where the records disagree with the factory floor and size every finding in operational and financial terms. It ends in a ranked list of interventions and a decision, not a slide deck. Fixed scope, fixed price.

• Begins with a one-day systems health check, at no cost
• Process and information mapping, done on site
• Every finding sized in cost, cash and EBITDA
• A ranked list of interventions the leadership team can act on

Every plant runs on things that would stop it if they failed and that nobody has written down: the one machine with no spare, the planner who holds the schedule in their head, the supplier with no second source, the server under a desk, the covenant that turns tight in a slow quarter. We walk the operation with your team and put every one of them on a single ranked list, each with its likelihood and its cost if it happens. Then we run the cases that matter through your own numbers: a key customer leaving, energy or material prices jumping, demand falling by a fifth, a line down for a month. For each you see what it does to margin and cash, how long you would have, and what you would do. Some risks get fixed in a week, some go on the plan, and a few you decide to carry knowingly, with the response already written.

• Single points of failure in machines, people, suppliers, systems and cash
• Each risk ranked by likelihood and sized by what it would cost
• Scenarios run through your own numbers: what each case does to margin and cash
• Cheap fixes done at once, the rest scheduled or carried knowingly, with a response ready

Most plants run on several systems that were never introduced to each other (an ERP, execution, a warehouse system, quality, finance and the spreadsheets between them), and on data none of them holds truthfully: bills of materials in spreadsheets and memory, duplicate item references, costs nobody trusts. The integration backbone answers both. It becomes the governed system of record for items, bills of materials, routings, planning and execution, and it connects the systems you keep, so each record is entered once, has one owner and flows to wherever it is needed. The core is proven in production, so you are not paying for it to be invented again; what we build with your team is the fit and the connections, one capability and one interface at a time, alongside the ERP you already run. Nothing is replaced overnight, and nothing that runs your plants today is put at risk.

• Items, bills of materials, routings, planning and execution, governed in one place
• ERP, MES, WMS, quality and finance connected; each record entered once
• A proven core, configured with your team to how your plants work
• Alongside your ERP, one capability and one interface at a time

There is no right answer to where a plant's systems should run, only the right answer for this plant. We work it out with your team: what must keep running when the link to the cloud drops, what can live off site, what your people can realistically operate, what the site's connectivity and budget allow. The design that comes out is yours, built where possible on tools your team already knows, with production continuing through an outage and catching up when the connection returns, backups proven by restoring them, and nothing your own team cannot run.

• Cloud, hybrid or on-premises, decided together against the plant's real constraints
• Production keeps running through an outage and resyncs after
• Built where possible on tools your team already knows
• Backups proven by restoring them, and nothing your own team cannot run

Most manufacturers quote and price from a standard cost that was set years ago and never reconciled with the factory floor, so product and customer margins are estimates. We implement costing that rolls up from live bills of materials, routings and captured actuals: what each product, order and customer actually costs, with variance visible the day it happens. Quoting, pricing and the decision to keep or drop a product become questions of fact.

• Cost roll-up from live bills of materials, routings and captured actuals
• Margin by product, order and customer
• Cost variance visible the day it occurs, not at month end
• Quoting and pricing on real cost

In most plants, purchasing runs on habit, safety stock covers uncertainty that better information would remove, and supplier performance is an opinion rather than a number. Once demand, bills of materials and routings are truthful, procurement can run on them: what to buy, when, and from whom. We rebuild purchasing and inventory policy against real demand and real lead times, and put supplier performance on a scoreboard the business acts on.

• Purchasing and inventory policy rebuilt against real demand and lead times
• Working capital released from stock that only covers poor information
• Supplier performance measured on quality, cost and delivery
• Should-cost visibility before a price is negotiated

Most manufacturers are offered AI as a subscription that sends their production data to someone else's servers. We build the alternative: a system you own, running on your own infrastructure and grounded in your own records, so bills of materials, drawings, costs and customer terms never leave the company. We put it to work where it earns its place: quoting from real cost, reading supplier documents, spotting scrap patterns, answering the questions your team asks the ERP every day. And we measure it like everything else we deliver.

• Runs on your own infrastructure; your data does not leave the company
• Grounded in your own items, bills of materials, routings, costs and documents
• Applied to the manual work that pays: quoting, documents, exceptions
• Your team trained to run it and extend it

Every plant has a handful of numbers that decide its margin: throughput, scrap, on-time delivery and working capital. This is the programme that moves them. We agree a baseline and a target for each at the start. Then, month by month, we take the biggest constraint in the plant and remove it with your team: a bottleneck scheduled against real capacity, a scrap cause traced and fixed, late deliveries followed back to their source, stock cut where it only covered poor information. Each fix is proved in the data before we move to the next. Progress is reported monthly against the baseline, in operational terms and in EBITDA, and part of our fee depends on it.

• A baseline and a target for throughput, scrap, on-time delivery and working capital
• One constraint at a time, removed with your team and proved in the data
• Planning against real capacity, execution tracked from release to dispatch
• Reported monthly against the baseline, with part of our fee tied to it

When the numbers arrive late, or three functions arrive with three versions of them, decisions slow down and confidence drains. We build one monthly operating pack drawn straight from the operational data: the same measures every month, defined once and reconciled to the accounts. It is a pack a board can decide on, an investor and a lender can rely on, and an owner can hold management to.

• One pack, drawn from live operational data and reconciled to the accounts
• The same measures every month, defined once and owned
• Operational measures carried through to margin, cash and EBITDA
• A reporting rhythm the board, investors and lenders can rely on

Some changes need someone inside the business with the authority to make them. One of our partners takes an operating role in your company for a defined period, as chief operating officer, chief technology officer or transformation lead, accountable for the plan and its numbers. Not advice from the side. Responsibility inside.

• A Grandhelm partner in an executive role, for a defined period
• Accountable for an agreed plan and its measures
• Builds the team that runs the operation after we step back

When a plant is losing money, covenants are tight or the order book no longer covers the cost base, the first task is not transformation. It is cash. We take an operating mandate with the authority to act: we find where the cash is going, stop the losses that can be stopped in weeks, and rebuild the cost base around the products and customers that actually earn. The structural work starts once the business is stable, not before.

• Cash and liquidity first, inside the first weeks
• Loss-making products, customers and lines identified, then fixed or exited
• Cost base rebuilt against the order book the plant can win
• A weekly operating rhythm the board and its lenders can follow

For owners who have built a good manufacturing business and do not have an obvious hand to pass it to. We take operating responsibility for the long term and align ourselves with the outcome, from outcome-linked fees to participation in the business. The company keeps its name, its people and its plants. The owner gains a partner with a stake in the result.

• For owner-managed manufacturers facing succession
• Long-term operating responsibility, not a project
• Structures from outcome-linked fees to participation