Independent ERP consulting · Arlington Heights, Illinois
The cost model is the hard part.
I build ERP systems for mid-market manufacturers — the company structure, the item and inventory master, the work centers and run standards, and the shop floor data collection underneath it. Not advice about the build. The build.
Press 4 · Shift trace · Sheetfed offset
What this is
One person who does the work directly.
Most ERP problems at mid-market manufacturers are not software problems. The software works. What is missing is a chart of accounts that supports the reporting someone actually needs, units of measure that convert correctly, budgeted hourly rates that reflect what the equipment really does, and machine data clean enough to cost a job against.
That work is unglamorous and it decides everything downstream. Estimating reads from it. Margin reporting reads from it. So does whatever a buyer looks at during diligence.
I design it and I configure it. There is no team behind me learning your environment on your budget, and no project manager translating between us. For clients who already have a vendor implementation underway, I work alongside it on the parts the vendor does not own.
Capabilities
Where I am useful.
- Multi-company builds
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Standing up an acquired business as a new company inside an existing ERP: org structure, general ledger, AR and AP, sales classes, units of measure, item and inventory master, warehousing, work centers, routings, and security. Including the decisions that are expensive to reverse later — shared versus separate master tables, item numbering, and the cutover date.
- Shop floor & unit cost
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Getting real numbers off the plant floor and into the system: data collection across presses and finishing equipment, labor and material capture, budgeted hourly rates validated with the people who run the machines, and unit costs that hold up when someone checks them against actuals.
- Print & packaging MIS
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Deep, hands-on experience with the print and packaging stack — estimating front ends, scheduling, and shop floor collection bolted onto a commercial print MIS to make it work for packaging. I have architected that configuration from the ground up, including the seams between products that no single vendor owns.
- Systems & integration
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The connective work around an ERP: site-to-site networking for multi-plant data, reporting rebuilt against a new schema when a legacy system goes away, and automation for the manual steps that survive a go-live because nobody had time to fix them.
Sectors
Manufacturers who make a physical thing.
Print & packaging
Folding carton, corrugated, displays, and fulfillment. Estimating and unit costing where substrate, makeready, and spoilage decide the margin.
Eyewear & consumer goods
Frame and product manufacturing with multi-channel distribution, where inventory and cost visibility span more than one system.
PE-backed platforms
Buy-and-build groups integrating add-on acquisitions, where one ledger and comparable unit costs across plants are the actual deliverable.
How engagements run
Defined scope, fixed fee, written handoff.
Work starts with a short paid discovery step. I find out what the current system holds, what data can actually be extracted, and what reporting people depend on — then hand back a written design and firm pricing for the rest. Quoting a build before knowing what is under the hood does neither of us a favor.
After that, each phase is priced against defined deliverables. Rates and standards I load get validated with your directors and production managers and signed off, so there is no question later about where a number came from. Anything based on equipment that has not run production yet is marked provisional and revisited against actuals.
Every engagement ends with documentation your team can use to maintain the configuration without calling me.
Contact
If something here sounds like your problem, write.
Useful things to include: what system you are on, what is driving the timeline, and what breaks today. That is usually enough for me to tell you whether I am the right person or point you somewhere better.