How we work
No mystery, no discovery phase that quietly bills for six weeks. Here is the whole method, stage by stage, with the deliverables you receive at each point.
The principle: describe before you prescribe
The single most common reason improvement projects fail is that the fix was designed against an imagined process. Before OPSA proposes anything, we can describe your operation back to you in enough detail that your own supervisors nod. Only then do we suggest changes.
That discipline costs about a week at the start of an engagement and saves months at the end. It is also why our recommendations tend to be smaller and more numerous than clients expect — real operations rarely need one heroic change, they need eleven small ones in the right order.
Four stages, week by week
Durations below describe a standard assessment-led engagement. Larger scopes stretch the middle two stages, never the first.
Listen — days 1 to 2
A working session with the owner, then short interviews with the people closest to the work. We agree the three questions the engagement must answer and the numbers that will prove whether we answered them. Access, confidentiality and scheduling are all settled here so nothing stalls later.
You receive: a one-page engagement charter with objectives, measures, named contacts and dates.
Map — days 3 to 8
We follow the work rather than the org chart. Consultants walk the process end to end, time each step, count queues and exceptions, and pull historical data from your systems. Everything is recorded as observed, including the workarounds people are slightly embarrassed about.
You receive: swimlane process maps, a step-level time and exception log, and a data quality note.
Quantify — days 9 to 12
Every friction point is converted into an annual dollar figure using your own cost base, then paired with a specific change, an implementation effort estimate and a payback period. Items that cost more to fix than to tolerate are listed too, marked "leave alone" — that honesty is part of the deliverable.
You receive: a costed findings register and a sequenced 90-day action plan.
Hand over — days 13 to 14, then 30-day follow-up
A ninety-minute session with your leadership team walking through the findings and the workings behind them. Owners are assigned, dates are set, and the plan goes into your hands, not ours. Thirty days of email follow-up is included so questions during implementation do not turn into another invoice.
You receive: final report, editable source files, dashboard templates and a 30-day support window.
What we ask of you
- One sponsor inside the business who can unblock access
- Roughly four hours of staff interview time per week
- Read-only exports from your existing systems
- Honest answers, including about the workarounds
- A decision at the end of each phase before the next begins
What we never do
- Recommend headcount reductions as a first resort
- Bill for time that was not agreed in writing beforehand
- Leave you dependent on us to run the new process
- Share your data with anyone outside the named team
- Accept commission from a vendor we recommend
Let's look at your operation together
A 30-minute call, no charge and no obligation. Tell us what is slowing the business down and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right people to help.