AdD Ops

AdD OPS — HOW THE BUSINESS RUNS

Operations that hold when you grow.

Two days in your plant, the constraint named, and ninety days making sure the plan actually happens. Most factories already own capacity they think they need to buy.

Book an operations reality check — €490

See how we work

You don’t have a strategy problem. You have a running-it problem.

Nothing breaks at fifty people in one building. It breaks at the second plant, the third market, the shift you added last quarter. The process that worked when everyone could see each other stops working when they can’t — and the first thing you notice is delivery dates slipping for reasons nobody can name.

By then you have usually been told it is a planning problem, a people problem and an ERP problem, by three different people, in the same month.

Complexity is not the price of growth. It is what happens when nobody is paid to remove it.

Find it. Clear it. Keep it moving.

R

Find it

Ninety minutes online and your own numbers. Whether you have a job here at all, and what shape it is.

R

Clear it

Two days in the plant with the people who do the work. Bottlenecks named, ranked, and a plan with owners and dates.

R

Keep it moving

Half a day a month holding that plan to its dates, because that is the part everybody skips.

START HERE

Operations Reality Check

€490

fixed price · credited in full against your project if you go ahead within 60 days

Send us four things: your order book, your on-time delivery over the last three months, output per shift, and the dates you missed. Then ninety minutes online with the person who actually runs operations — not the person who reports on it. Five working days later you get two pages: where the capacity is going, the three constraints that matter ranked in order, what each one is worth in weeks or units, and which one to attack first.

What it is not.

It is not a plant audit. It is not a time study. It is not a Lean programme, and nothing gets implemented. It tells you the size and the shape of the job before you commit to it — which is exactly what most companies are missing when they ask for a quote.

Why online.

Because the constraint is almost always visible in your own numbers, and confirming it on the shop floor is work you should pay for once, inside the project — not twice, to get a proposal. If your case needs us in the building, we will tell you in the two pages.

Book a reality check

Clear it

Two days on the floor.

We come to the plant. We follow the work as it actually runs — not as the manual describes it — and then we put the people who do it in one room for two days. Where it matters, your suppliers come too.

You leave with the bottlenecks named, the constraints ranked in the order they cost you money, and a plan with owners and dates against it.

What we look at

Bottlenecks — the line, the station or the handover that sets the pace of everything behind it

Real capacity — what the plant can actually do, as opposed to what the standard says it can

Flow between sites — the work that stops every time it crosses a wall, a country or a system

Delivery performance — where the date moves, and who finds out last

What happens on day three.

Most workshops end on day two, with a good plan and a room full of goodwill. Ninety days later the plan has been overtaken by the week. We have watched it happen, so we stopped selling the two days on their own — every session now comes with ninety days of follow-through, decided while everyone is still in the room.

If we can’t measure it, we’ll tell you before you pay for it.

Fixed price, agreed in writing before we travel. Includes the ninety days that follow. Handover to your team included.

Start with a reality check

Keep it moving

A plan is not a result.

Ninety days, then monthly for as long as it is useful. Once a month we are back — half a day, on site or online — and we go down the plan line by line: what moved, what didn’t, who is stuck, and what the delay has cost you so far. You get one page. Your team gets a date in the diary they know is coming. It is deliberately small. This is not a consultant living in your business, and it is not priced like one. It is the difference between a plan you paid for and a plan that happened.

We can’t show you a before and after if we left the day the plan was written.

When half a day a month isn’t enough. Some companies reach a point where they need the judgement of an operations director every week rather than every month — usually the second plant, or a year of growth that outran the org chart. We do that too, on a regular rhythm and to the same method, without the salary, the car and the twelve months it takes to hire one.

The same rhythm covers the projects you already have. Most industrial SMEs are not short of initiatives — they are short of anyone whose job is to make sure the initiatives finish. We put dates and names on the ones that matter and hold them there. No governance framework, no maturity model, no steering committee that meets to review the minutes of the last steering committee.

We keep three of these running at a time. The person who committed is the person who shows up, and that only works with a short list. It is not where most companies start, and we will tell you when you are not there yet.

Monthly, cancel with notice. Price on request — it follows the rhythm you need, not a rate card.

Before you invest

You are about to buy capacity. How much do you already own?

The quote for the new line is on your desk and the lead time is nine months. Before you sign it, there is one question worth the delay: how much of that capacity is already inside the building — sitting behind a changeover, a bottleneck, or a planning rule nobody has revisited since the plant was half this size.

Sometimes the answer is “not enough”, and you buy the line with better numbers behind the decision. Often the answer is “more than you think”, and the investment gets smaller, or later, or unnecessary.

What you get

Real capacity — measured, not assumed from the standard

What can be recovered — at what cost, and in what timeframe

The investment case, rebuilt on both: what to buy, how much of it, and when

Demand scenarios — and what each one does to the answer

This is the piece of work most likely to end with us telling you to spend less. We are also, by a wide margin, the cheapest line in that decision.

Fixed scope and price, agreed before we start. Price on request.

Talk to us before you sign

How we think about a plant

We don’t digitise waste. We don’t automate inefficiency.

Productivity, capacity, service and cost problems almost never have a single cause. Low output can be planning, wrong standards, maintenance, methods, material flow, training, quality, technology — or a number somebody read wrong. So we don’t start by looking for a solution. We start by working out which layer is actually holding the operation back.

You don’t do all seven. You do the one that is limiting you. The hard part is knowing which — and not doing five before you have done two.

LAYER 1

See it as it is

Data, capacities, cycle times, standards, saturation, real demand, operating indicators.

You cannot fix what you are measuring wrong.

LAYER 2

Make it repeatable

Breakdowns, maintenance, quality, working methods, process parameters, training, material availability.

There is no point optimising a process that isn’t stable yet.

LAYER 3

Get the capacity back

Cycle times, changeovers, micro-stops, scrap, line balancing, shift patterns, equipment utilisation.

Recover the capacity you already own before you add any.

LAYER 4

Make it flow

Planning, sequencing, batch sizes, bottlenecks, WIP, intermediate stock, internal logistics, synchronisation.

An efficient machine does not make an efficient factory.

LAYER 5

Then digitise

Cycle times, changeovers, micro-stops, scrap, line balancing, shift patterns, equipment utilisation.

Only once the process is known, stable and organised.

This is where AdD Tech takes over

LAYER 6

Then, and only then, invest

Technology options, required capacity, demand scenarios, risk, return, scalability.

CAPEX as an industrial decision based on data, not on perception.

LAYER 7

Keep finding the next one

Indicators, review routines, visual management, clear ownership, improvement mechanisms.

From fixing problems when they appear to seeing them coming.

The record

The same two days, three times.

We are not going to show you a percentage we can’t stand behind. Here is what we can show you: three industrial companies, the same two days, written up at the time.

Herko Trucks

Zero-emission last-mile logistics

We walked the production line, then spent two days with Herko’s own team and their external partners in the same room. The workflows were stripped back until the bottlenecks were visible, and the scaling phase came out of it with a roadmap.

Read the write-up →

BeGas Motor · Bilbao

Engine manufacturing

Headquarters, workshop, and the production process end to end — then the kind of honest conversation about what comes next that only happens once you have stood on the floor.

Read the write-up →

An industrial manufacturer

Via Kentia Engineering · client not named

200% headcount growth in four years, with no processes underneath it, a product launch coming and an audit behind it. Two days on how projects were run and how people talked to each other. Out with the weak points named, responsibilities assigned and dates against them. Several years of work together since.

Read the write-up →

No numbers, because we didn’t measure the after — we weren’t there for it. That is exactly why the ninety days now come with the two days.

Questions people actually ask

Is this interim management?

No. Interim cover replaces a director who has left, full time, for a period. We are the opposite: part time, ongoing, and we are not there to hold a seat warm. If what you need is cover for a vacancy, we will say so and point you somewhere else.

We already have an operations manager. Does this still make sense?

Usually yes, and for a better reason than you would expect. A good operations manager is fully occupied running the plant that exists. Nobody in a company your size is paid to step out of it and fix the thing that is costing you a quarter. That is the job.

Who actually does the work?

A senior operations person, every time — someone who has run a plant, not studied one. There is no pyramid here to feed, so there is nobody junior to hand you down to. We are a small team, so the first conversation and the work in your plant are not always the same pair of hands: you will know who before you commit, and it does not change once a project is running. What never changes is the method. The same seven layers, in the same order, whoever is holding the pen.

Do we have to do all seven layers?

No, and we would argue with you if you asked. The method exists to work out which layer is holding you back; most companies need work on one or two. What the order buys you is not doing layer five before layer two — which is how a factory ends up with an expensive system faithfully automating a process nobody fixed.

Do we have to take the ninety days?

They come with the two days, and we don’t split them. We used to, and we watched good plans go quiet by the second month — not because anyone stopped caring, but because the week always wins. If you are certain you will hold it yourself, tell us on day one and we will build the plan for someone else to run. We would rather know than pretend.

How much of your time do we get?

Half a day a month for the follow-through, on a fixed rhythm you can plan around, plus availability in between. If you move up to a fractional director it is typically two to four days a month. Either way we agree it in writing and we do not quietly reduce it.

Do you need to come to the plant?

For a project, yes — you cannot fix flow from a screen. For the reality check, no, and we would rather you didn’t pay for the trip before you know whether there is a job.

Which languages do you work in?

English and Spanish in the room. Other European languages we cover through people we work with regularly, and we will tell you that up front rather than let you assume it is in-house. Deliverables are written in English as standard; a second language is quoted separately, openly, rather than buried in the fee.

Do you do the systems as well?

That is AdD Tech. Ops changes how the work runs; Tech builds and automates what carries it. Most companies need some of both, in that order — process first, then automation, because automating a broken process only makes it break faster.

Growth doesn’t have to cost you control.

Start with the reality check. Two pages, ninety minutes, and an honest view of what is actually holding you back — credited in full if you go ahead.

Book an operations reality check — €490