Revenue doubled. Margin didn’t. Somewhere between the PO and the invoice, money is quietly vanishing into duplicate reconciliations, rework, and a dozen WhatsApp threads that pass for a workflow. We walk the process, quantify where it’s leaking, and install the rhythm that stops the leak from coming back in month four.
Trace the order-to-cash and quote-to-deliver flows as they actually run.
Quantify rework, duplicate entry, and the handoffs where margin leaks out.
Simplify the steps, clarify ownership, write the SOPs that actually get used.
Install weekly and monthly reviews with the right metrics on the table.
Document, train, and step back. Your team runs it without us.
Operational problems don’t get solved by reorganisation charts. They get solved by mapping what actually happens on the floor today, spotting the five or six places where time, material, or attention is bleeding out, and putting a standing weekly review in place that keeps those gaps closed.
We walk the flow end to end. Quote, order, production plan, despatch, invoice, collection. We talk to the people doing the work, not just the people who describe it in a slide. The gap between those two versions is where the margin is usually sitting.
We aren’t here to run a six-month ERP implementation or launch a Lean programme with a capital L. We’re here to fix the specific things that are quietly costing you margin, write the work down properly so a new joiner can follow it, and make sure your plant manager or head of ops owns it after we leave.
The six patterns we see most often walking the floor. They’re all fixable without ripping up the org chart.
Top-line looks fine but gross margin has slipped two or three points over 18 months. Nobody can point to the cause.
What should be a standard process turns into a custom project every time. Work gets done but it takes twice as long as it should.
Stock sits, materials get written off, billable hours go unbilled. The loss is normalised because nobody measures it properly.
Sales promises things ops can’t deliver. Ops changes things finance doesn’t know about. The handoffs fall through the cracks between teams.
Three people know how things actually work. If one leaves, the business shakes. Nothing is written down.
There’s no standing weekly forum where operational performance is reviewed and actions are set. Problems fester until someone escalates.
Twelve to twenty weeks, a fair bit of which is us on your plant floor, in your warehouse, or shadowing the service-delivery team. No redesign gets signed off that isn’t walked through first.
We map the core processes as they actually run, not as the SOP says they should. We walk the floor, shadow the work, and quantify where time and margin go.
Out of 30 issues we’ll usually find, 5 account for most of the lost margin. We pick those, agree effort and impact with leadership, and sequence the work.
We redesign the target process, document it, and roll it out with the people who have to live with it, training included, not bolted on later.
Weekly ops review, monthly business review, defined KPIs, visible dashboards. We co-run the rhythm until it’s a habit, then step back.
Artefacts your ops lead can actually pull up in a Monday review. Process maps taped on walls where they help, dashboards your supervisors read without training.
Visual map of how work actually flows today, with quantified time, cost, and margin-loss points called out against the data.
Five to eight specific initiatives, ranked by impact and effort, with clear ownership, target metric, and timeframe.
The new process flows, written down with the handoffs, roles, and exception paths defined, not just happy-path diagrams.
A short, honest set of operating metrics tied to outcomes the team can influence, with visible dashboards, not buried reports.
Weekly ops review, monthly business review, escalation paths, documented, scheduled, and co-run with your leadership during the engagement.
Playbooks, training sessions, and an ownership matrix so the new process survives staff changes and we don’t become a dependency.
“Revenue had doubled but we were working harder for less. Apxe mapped the order flow, found where three people were doing the same reconciliation, and put a weekly review in place that actually surfaces problems early.”Result: Operating margin recovered from 6% to 14%
Ops work only holds if leadership commits floor time and accepts changes to how people work day to day. Honest self-read before we talk.
The five questions every plant manager or COO asks us. Short versions here, longer conversations on the call.