What the Tax Looks Like
It does not show up in the P&L line.
It shows up in the orders that ship late, the quality holds that surface too far downstream, and a stack of spreadsheets one person quietly keeps running.
Production schedules that never match the floor
The plan is in Excel. Reality is on the line. Reconciliation happens at the end of the shift, after the orders have already shipped wrong.
Quality data trapped in a separate system
QA logs in one app, production data in another, the supervisor pulls them into a spreadsheet on Monday morning. The defect pattern is visible too late to fix.
Inventory counts that drift
Bin counts on paper, system counts in the ERP, cycle counts in a fourth place. The number you trust is the one a person walked the floor to find.
The shift supervisor is the integration layer
When they take a holiday, the production manager reads three screens to answer one question that used to have one owner. That is key-person risk, not experience.
The 30-Day Operations Reset
Five modules. 30 days. Fixed price.
The Reset builds working software. Five modules, two standard and three custom, live in 30 days. We pick the three workflow modules costing the most output, scope them tightly, and ship.
01
Fit call
A 20 minute conversation to walk through the production workflow that is breaking. We confirm whether the Reset is the right starting point.
02
Written quote, five modules
We send a written quote listing the five workflow modules we will build in 30 days. Two standard, user authentication and role-based access control, plus three custom. Fixed price. No scope drift.
03
Build and deliver
Twenty-eight days of focused build, then live use with 30-day hypercare. A senior team builds, founders stay accountable.
Completion and On-Time Guarantees
Two-sided risk reversal.
On-time guarantee
Past a two-week grace period, every week we run late costs us 10% off the price, capped at 50%.
Completion guarantee
Nothing deploys until a signed acceptance checklist passes. The codebase is handed over, with documentation, demo videos, and training, per the agreed contract.
Fit Check
Is this the right shape for your plant?
Straight signal on where the Pilot fits and where it does not. The 20 minute fit call is the next step either way.
If this is you, the Pilot is the right starting point.
- Mid-market discrete manufacturers running shop floor on spreadsheets and paper
- Food, beverage, or specialty assembly teams where quality data is disconnected from production
- Operators who want a working module in weeks, not a six-month MES procurement
If this is you, we will say so on the call.
- Full ERP or MES replacement programmes
- High-volume continuous-process plants with sub-second control loops
- Multi-site rollouts with hundreds of concurrent operators on day one
FAQ
Frequently asked questions.
Will this replace our ERP or sit alongside it?
It sits alongside. We are not in the ERP replacement business. The Reset targets the operational gaps your ERP does not cover: the shop floor logs, the quality data, the inventory counts that get reconciled in Excel because the ERP module was too rigid to use.
We already have an MES. Why do we need this?
If your MES does the job, you do not. We see Resets get traction where the MES covers part of the workflow and the rest spills into spreadsheets, paper, and WhatsApp. The Reset replaces the spillover, not the MES.
What about disruption during peak production?
We plan around your production calendar. Critical cutover phases are scheduled outside peak weeks. We build incrementally so there is never a big-bang go-live that risks output.
How do you handle ISO, FDA, or other compliance?
Compliance is built in, not bolted on. We design validation rules, audit trails, and reporting structures that meet the standards your QA team works to. Your compliance team owns the requirements. We engineer the system that enforces them.
We have tried shop-floor apps before and the team did not use them. What is different?
Off-the-shelf tools fail because they make your team adapt to the tool. We do the opposite. We watch how your supervisors, operators, and dispatchers actually work, then build software that fits into that without retraining anyone. Adoption is built in.
How quickly can we see impact?
If the right starting point is a handful of high-friction workflows, the 30-Day Operations Reset ships five modules in 30 days. A broader build, replacing more of the spreadsheet stack, takes longer and gets scoped after the Reset ships.
What happens after the engagement?
The codebase, the deployment, and the documentation are handed over per the agreed contract. If you want ongoing care, BuildXLR8 Assurance is our care plan, custom-priced per build and prepaid annual, for security patches, dependency updates, and monitoring. You are never locked in.
Stop paying the Spreadsheet Tax.
Book a 20 minute fit call. We walk through the workflow that is costing the most output, confirm it is a fit, and send a written quote with the five modules listed.