Industrial manufacturer · ~$140M revenue · 3 plants

Rebuilding the operating model of a $140M industrial manufacturer

Decision rights and one executive cadence lifted on-time delivery from 82% to 96% and EBITDA margin by 3.1 points in twelve months.

Disciplines deployed: FOUNDATION → SIMPLIFY → LEAD
Measurement window: 12 months
Measures reported: 4

Condition 01 of eight

Growth has outrun structure

The business is bigger than the system that runs it. Every decision routes through the same few people.

All eight conditions

Present reality

Growth had outrun the operating model. Every material decision routed to the owner, delivery promises slipped, and margin leaked into expediting and overtime.

Constraint

Authority was never distributed as the company scaled: one owner held every decision above a trivial threshold, so the enterprise could only move as fast as one calendar.

Intervention — architecture installed

Present-reality read, decision rights redesign, one executive operating cadence with owners, dates, and evidence.

FOUNDATION → SIMPLIFY → LEAD → GROW

Mapped to the operating system

What was architected inside each discipline, and the measured consequence. Disciplines held out of scope are shown with the reason — nothing is implied by omission.

1. FOUNDATION
Build
Loaded in this engagement
Present-reality read of structure and decision rights across three plants; authority mapped by level with written thresholds.
Result: Owner sign-offs fell from ~60 to ~12 a month (−80%).
FOUNDATION →
2. SIMPLIFY
Focus
Loaded in this engagement
The order-to-delivery value stream stripped to the steps that create the promise date; expediting treated as a defect rather than a service.
Result: Expediting and overtime spend fell from $2.1M to $1.2M a year (−43%).
SIMPLIFY →
3. LEAD
Execute
Loaded in this engagement
One executive operating cadence with named owners, dates and evidence at every review.
Result: On-time delivery moved from 82% to 96% (+14 pts).
LEAD →
4. GROW
Scale
Held out of scope
Held out of scope by design: the enterprise could not absorb growth while one calendar gated every decision. Capacity for GROW was created, not consumed.
Result: EBITDA margin rose 3.1 pts, which funded the growth work that followed.
GROW →

ARC™ — the renewal loop around all four

The quarterly renewal review re-reads decision thresholds against volume; two have been raised since the engagement closed, by the leadership team.

ARC™ →

Measured result — what moved, and by how much

Industrial manufacturer · ~$140M revenue · 3 plants — measured change over 12 months
Measure	Before	After (12 months)	Change
On-time delivery	82%	96%	+14 pts
EBITDA margin	9.4%	12.5%	+3.1 pts
Decisions requiring owner sign-off	~60/month	~12/month	−80%
Expediting & overtime spend	$2.1M/yr	$1.2M/yr	−43%

Before → after, measure by measure · 12 months

On-time delivery
+14 pts
Before82%
After96%
Standardized against On-time delivery — Original promise date across all three plants; full quarter at both readings.
EBITDA margin
+3.1 pts
Before9.4%
After12.5%
Standardized against EBITDA margin — Client-reported, same adjustments both periods.
Decisions requiring owner sign-off
−80%
Before60
After12
Standardized against Decisions escalated to one leader — Monthly average over a quarter; same approval threshold both readings.
Expediting & overtime spend
−43%
Before$2.1M
After$1.2M
Standardized against Avoidable operating spend — Annualized run rate from the same GL accounts.

The cadence is now run by the leadership team without Compass in the room.

Transfer — what the client now owns

The plant leadership team now runs the executive cadence, sets its own decision thresholds, and trains new managers into it without Compass present.

Compass leaves business architects, not dependency.

Client identities, brands, and locations are withheld under confidentiality. Metrics are client-reported and measured over the window shown; they describe those engagements and are not a projection of results for any other enterprise.

Start with your own present reality

Every engagement above began with an honest read of the architecture already producing the results. Score yours, or schedule a conversation.

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