Four recoveries, told the whole way through.

Defence & rail · industrial distribution · Nov 2024 – Oct 2026

An at-risk £17m defence contract, held at extension.

The position

Full P&L accountability for a £29.4m defence and transport portfolio: eleven accounts, forty sites, twenty-five people, reporting to the Head of Defence. On-time in-full was running at 86%. Back orders were spread across 2,600 SKUs and more than £10m of inventory.

The flagship relationship inside the portfolio — £17m+ of contract value — was at risk ahead of extension, and a separate £263k credit exposure was open with no agreed cause. Nobody could state the portfolio's slow-moving stock exposure, which is usually the tell: if the number does not exist, every decision above it is a guess.

What the analysis proved

• Forensic analysis of 7,548 transactions isolated the £263k credit exposure to two SKUs — 97% of the value, concentrated in calendar-based replenishment. A root cause internal teams had already looked for and missed.
• Across 17,468 SKUs and eleven accounts, 168 SKUs drove 50% of sales, and £23.3m of slow-moving and obsolete exposure was classified for the first time.
• £57,567 of margin leakage across 181 negative-margin products, and £40k of annual surcharge exposure across 209 SKUs.
• £123k of at-risk catalogue value traced to an EDI label-compliance failure, caused by purchase-order prefix mapping.

Service first. SLAs redesigned around what the sites actually needed, a weekly performance forum, and operating routines resequenced so work arrived in the order the sites could absorb. The commercial recovery ran alongside it, moving the flagship engagement from transactional supply to strategic partnership through structured recovery and senior stakeholder alignment.

Then the stock and the plan. The supply chain and procurement operating model was restructured on ABC/XYZ segmentation with real-time inventory tracking, and a three-tier rationalisation governance model set what was allowed back into the range. Three S&OP cycles were embedded across £35m+ of billing, with stock burn-downs, run-rate modelling, forecast bias analysis and lead-time mapping.

The FY27 forecasting architecture was built from scratch: a £29.4m plan target across eleven accounts, monthly seasonal phasing via centred moving averages, probability-weighted pipeline, and Conservative, Central and Stretch scenarios. On a separate contract exit, sole commercial lead reframed a £494k residual stock exposure to a £157k dedicated-stock liability by separating 40 customer-specific items from 93 shared lines.

Aerospace & defence · F-35 programme · Apr 2021 – Feb 2022

A belt programme that paid for itself twenty times over.

The position

Running the Continuous Improvement Centre of Excellence for the F-35 programme, with a team of seven Lean Process Engineers. Improvement activity existed, but as a collection of individual projects rather than a capability the programme could direct, prioritise and hold.

What changed

Black Belt and Green Belt cohorts coached through real projects in the F-35 improvement portfolio — live problems with money attached, not training exercises. Every project carried a validated saving before it closed.

Alongside it, a Continuous Improvement Maturity Framework built and rolled out across the Centre of Excellence, integrating 5S, Kanban and standard work, so improvement was identified and prioritised systematically instead of opportunistically. Also sat on the corrective actions board, applying RCA, 5 Whys and CAPA to critical quality issues and maintaining AS9100 audit readiness.

What it returned

Manufacturing · dispense equipment · Feb 2022 – Dec 2023

A 32% defect rate, treated as normal until it wasn't.

The position

Quality management across an ISO 9001 site, supplier quality and process capability, with a team of three. The defect rate stood at 32% and was being managed as a characteristic of the process rather than a fault in it. Warranty and claims resolution was taking thirty-two days.

What changed

Process control and prevention rebuilt rather than inspection added: PFMEA, supplier quality, standard work, 5S and error-proofing, so the defect could not be made in the first place.

Critical control points were established from PFMEA and warranty-data analysis, which is what let a new foaming insulation process come on line ahead of schedule instead of costing output during transition. The internal audit system was redesigned through DMAIC, and value stream mapping was turned on the claims process itself.

What it returned

Materials manufacturing · QHSE · Dec 2023 – Oct 2024

Thirty-two days to close a claim, across three ISO systems.

The position

An integrated ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 management system in name, run with a team of three. In practice the three had grown separately and duplicated each other's paperwork. Claims took thirty-two days to resolve, audit preparation consumed weeks, and energy sat outside the system entirely — treated as an overhead rather than a process variable.

What changed

A DMAIC-led redesign of the claims process, then controls, evidence packs, CAPA and management review reworked across all three standards. Document control and CAPA moved into a single 5S-based system with real-time non-conformance visibility.

Value stream mapping and standard work were applied to the management system itself. First Article Inspection went into the supplier quality assurance programme. Energy was brought inside the system and aligned to ISO 14001, and TPM with autonomous maintenance training went onto the constraining assets.

What it returned