Problems › Operational Excellence Consulting
Operational excellence consulting brings a method — lean, six sigma, TPS, continuous improvement — and the discipline to apply it. The method is sound and the common failure is aiming it. Improving a step that is not the bottleneck produces a local efficiency gain and no change in output, which is why so many programmes can show a hundred completed initiatives and a flat P&L. Before buying a method, identify the constraint and what is sitting on it. Efficiency Transformation Strategy does that first, and it frequently finds the constraint is a selection or pricing rule rather than a process.
Operational excellence consulting brings a method — lean, six sigma, TPS, continuous improvement — and the discipline to apply it. The method is sound and the common failure is aiming it. Improving a step that is not the bottleneck produces a local efficiency gain and no change in output, which is why so many programmes can show a hundred completed initiatives and a flat P&L. Before buying a method, identify the constraint and what is sitting on it. Efficiency Transformation Strategy does that first, and it frequently finds the constraint is a selection or pricing rule rather than a process.
Every operation has one thing that limits output at any given time — a machine, a crew, a licence, an approval, a person. Work done anywhere else does not increase throughput; it increases the inventory waiting at the constraint. This is not controversial and has been understood for forty years, and improvement programmes still routinely violate it, for a structural reason: initiatives are generated by the teams that volunteer, and the constrained team is by definition the one with no spare capacity to volunteer.
The result is a programme with excellent hygiene and no effect. Waste is removed, standard work is written, boards are visible, and the units out of the door are the same as last year. Because the activity is real, the response to a flat result is usually more initiatives, which consumes more of the capacity of the teams that were never limiting anything.
The second thing that hides in these programmes is that the constraint is often full of the wrong work. A plant running at capacity on a product line earning nothing does not have an efficiency problem; it has a selection problem wearing an efficiency costume. No amount of method fixes that, and method applied to it makes the unprofitable work cheaper to produce, which increases the volume of it.
Efficiency Transformation Strategy (catalog id T12) starts from the constraint and what occupies it — throughput, contribution per unit of the scarce resource, and what would have to be true for the next unit of capacity to pay. Where the answer is that the process genuinely is the limit, a lean programme is the right purchase and the analysis will point at where to aim it.
These three together are the signature. One on its own usually points somewhere else.
✓ A large number of completed improvement initiatives and unchanged output
✓ Nobody agrees on which step is the bottleneck, or the answer changes by department
✓ The most improved areas are the ones with the most available time
The move that usually makes it worse. Rolling out a method across the whole operation, which spends the scarce improvement capacity on the steps that were never limiting anything.
Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.
Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.
The diagnosis changes with the shape of the business. Each of these works the same question through one industry's actual economics, with an excerpt from a real analysis run on a company of that type.
It routes to Efficiency Transformation Strategy (catalog id T12), one of 29 engagements. The output is a sequence with a stopping rule — which move first, what it funds next, and the observation that would say it is not working — rather than a list of things you could consider.
Read a complete report before deciding whether it is worth your time.
They solve different problems and the choice matters less than the aim. Lean attacks flow and waiting; six sigma attacks variation and defects. If your problem is that things sit in queues, lean. If it is that outputs are inconsistent, six sigma. If you do not yet know which, the method choice is premature and either one will produce activity.
Assessment phases run roughly £40k–£120k. Full deployment with embedded practitioners and training is commonly £250k–£1m over a year, often quoted against a promised multiple of savings. Ask how the baseline is set and who verifies the savings, because self-verified benefits are the norm and they are systematically generous.
The method can — the material is public and cheap, and plenty of firms have taught themselves. What is genuinely hard to self-supply is the outside judgement about where to aim it and the willingness to say that a favoured department is not the problem. That is the part worth buying, and it is a much smaller purchase than a deployment.
Percision is the wrong tool if you already know the answer and only need execution capacity, or if the business is pre-revenue — then the constraint is evidence about the market, not analysis of your own figures. Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library. Also wrong if you need facilitation, politics, or someone to sit with a lender or buyer. Those are human jobs.
Percision is not a lawyer, tax advisor, auditor, licensed appraiser, clinical or regulatory filer, or an AI implementation shop. It does not do HR casework, creative-only brand work, or impersonate a named consulting firm. It is a strategy analysis engine — not a template library.
Describe the situation in your own words and we will tell you which analysis answers it — before you sign up for anything.
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