Questions owners ask us
Fees, timelines, confidentiality, coverage and what we will not do. If your question is not here, call 330-539-1058 and ask it directly.
What exactly happens on the first call?
Thirty minutes on the phone with Steve. You describe what is bothering you, he asks about a dozen questions — volumes, headcount, what changed recently, what you have already tried — and then gives you a straight answer about whether this is work we do well. There is no charge and no follow-up sequence.
How much does an engagement cost?
Operations reviews run $6,500 to $14,000 for a single site under 120 employees. Larger implementation work runs $12,000 to $30,000. Supervisor cohorts are $5,400. Every figure is fixed and written into the proposal before anything starts.
Do you work on an hourly basis?
Rarely. Hourly billing rewards the wrong behaviour on both sides. We occasionally use a day rate for advisory check-ins with past clients, but new work is always fixed-fee.
How long before we see anything?
The written diagnostic lands within ten business days of our last site day. Clients usually implement two or three items from the ranked list themselves within a fortnight of the readout, because the easy ones are deliberately at the top.
Will you talk to my employees without me present?
Yes, and this is a condition of the work. Interviews are confidential and nothing is attributed to an individual in the report. Filtered access produces a filtered diagnosis.
Do you sign non-disclosure agreements?
Always, and we will sign yours rather than insisting on ours. We also do not use client names publicly without written permission, which is why the case summaries on this site are anonymised.
Do you sell or implement software?
No. No reseller agreements, no referral fees, no commissions from any vendor. If a system purchase is genuinely warranted we will say so and help you write the requirements, then step back from the selection.
What size company do you work with?
Most clients have between 20 and 400 employees and $3M to $80M in revenue. Below about ten employees our fees seldom make sense.
Which areas do you cover?
Routinely within ninety minutes of Youngstown: Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana, Portage and Stark counties, greater Akron and eastern Cleveland, Western Pennsylvania and the northern panhandle of West Virginia.
Do you work with unionised sites?
Yes, frequently. We brief union leadership at the start of any engagement that touches work practices, and we do not participate in bargaining or in disciplinary matters.
Can you help us prepare for a sale or a lender?
We can put the operational house in order and document it, which materially helps. We are not valuation advisors, brokers or accountants, and we will work alongside the ones you already use.
What if we are not happy with the work?
Tell us during the engagement, not after. If a deliverable does not meet the scope as written, we redo it at our cost. In sixteen years that has happened three times and we would rather it never happened again.
How do we pay?
Fifty percent on signature, fifty on delivery of the written findings, by check or ACH. Implementation phases are billed monthly against the agreed schedule.
How quickly can you start?
Typically two to four weeks from a signed proposal. We run a small number of engagements at once on purpose, so occasionally the answer is six weeks — we will tell you honestly rather than overbook.
Still unsure? Send a note or call 330-539-1058. You will reach a person, not a queue.
Let's look at the numbers together
A first conversation costs nothing and takes about thirty minutes. Bring one problem that keeps resurfacing — a late shipment, a bottleneck, a report nobody trusts — and we'll tell you honestly whether we can help and roughly what it would take.