The Orbit Method
Four phases, run by one team. We do not hand off between diagnosis and delivery, because that handoff is exactly where transformation programs die.
The four phases
Ground
See the floor as it really is. We spend time on your floor, across shifts, and inside your systems. We map how work actually happens against how the SOP says it does. Changeovers get timed. Handovers get watched. Every point where data stops moving gets recorded.
Most of what matters here is not in any system. It is in the workaround a supervisor invented four years ago that everyone now depends on, and in the reason the second shift does something differently from the first.
Map
A roadmap with a business case. What to fix first, what to build versus configure versus buy, what each phase costs and what it returns. Sequenced by impact on your operation and by dependency — not by what is easiest to sell you.
This phase ends with a document your own engineers could execute from. That is deliberate: if the roadmap only works with us holding it, it is not a roadmap.
Build
Engineered for your floor. Machine connectivity, a unified data layer, and digitized workflows across the functions the roadmap prioritized — integrated into your existing ERP and MES rather than replacing them.
We release in stages so each one earns its keep before the next begins. Adoption design happens here, not after: entry points are chosen for the conditions operators actually work in, and tested on the line before go-live.
Sustain
Until the floor owns it. Go-live is the midpoint. We train supervisors and operators on the line, rebuild the daily management routine around what the system now shows, tune against real usage, and measure against the baselines we took before we started.
We stay through at least one full business cycle — a month-end, an audit, a shutdown — because those are the moments a system reveals what it cannot do.
Five things we hold to.
These are the commitments that shape what we recommend, and the ones worth holding us to.
The same people throughout
Whoever walks your floor in phase one is in the room at go-live. No partner-sells, junior-delivers pyramid, and no re-briefing a team that was not there.
Integrate rather than replace
Your ERP and MES stay. Rip-and-replace carries the highest risk and the longest payback in this market, and we will argue against it unless the case is overwhelming.
Adoption is a design constraint
Decided in phase three, not addressed in phase four. A system that adds time to an operator's cycle will be worked around no matter how good the training was.
Baselines before build
We measure before we change anything, so the claim that something improved can be checked rather than asserted. Including when it did not.
You own what we build
Source, documentation and architecture handed over as we go. Your continuity should never depend on our availability.
We will tell you to stop
When a process fix beats software, when the data will not support the model, or when a program should be halted rather than finished — that is the recommendation you get.
Start with the audit, not the software.
A fixed-scope engagement. We walk your floor, map where data breaks down, and hand you a costed roadmap — whether or not you build any of it with us.