Beau / Knows

The problem

Everyone did their job. The company still lost money.

A shop buys bar stock and saves $1,100 on the order. The cheaper stock runs 20% slower through the machine that was already the bottleneck. Nobody notices, because nobody is looking at both numbers.

Purchasing beat the price on material.Hit their number
Scheduling batched the work to cut setups.Hit their number
Quality added the inspection step.Hit their number
The company earned less than last quarter.No one's number

So which of them made the wrong call? None. The decision wasn't made at any of those desks — it was made by the measures, years before any of them got there. A measure that spans purchasing and scheduling and quality can't be fixed at any of those desks either.

It can only be changed one level above all three. Count the seats above all three in your shop. There's one. Nobody ever told you it came with the job.

Special Advisory Services

Not a program. Me, attached to your business.

Most consulting sells you a methodology and goes home. This is the other thing — a small number of owners at a time, for as long as it stays useful. Two outcomes, in this order:

FIRST

Make the shop make money

One rate that governs capacity, productivity, customers, market segments, job mix and price — instead of six departments each optimizing their own corner.

THEN

Make your hours optional

Once the number exists, your people can decide against it without calling you. Not that you're unnecessary — that the time you put in becomes your call.

This is not cost cutting, and it is not a pricing project. Cutting cost and making money are different activities, and most shops have been taught only the first.

What that looks like in practice

  • I tell you the thing nobody in your building will tell you.
  • I run the meeting you would rather not run, and take the heat for it.
  • I am in the room when you decide what to buy, who to keep, and what to charge.
  • I know your numbers well enough to argue with you about them.
  • When you decide to sell or hand it over, I have been there for the years that made it worth more.

You keep the credit. I have no interest in it.

The test

Run it yourself before you talk to me.

You don't have to take my word for any of this. Walk out on your floor and ask one question.

Who here holds capacity, customer, job mix and price all at once — and can tell me, in one number, whether this month made money or just looked busy?

Your estimator holds the quote and the routing. Your controller holds cost and the P&L. Your plant manager holds capacity and the schedule. Four honest, competent answers, and no combination of them covers the whole map.

That gap is the seat. It's the one job in the building that can't be delegated, because nobody below you is holding all four inputs at the same time.

Second question, and every owner knows this one instantly: if you didn't come in for two weeks, what would it cost you?

Who I am

Beau Ganas

I'm an accountant by training who stopped believing what cost accounting was telling manufacturers. I work with owners of custom, high-mix, low-volume shops — machining, fabrication, packaging, printing — on how the whole business decides, not on how the estimator quotes.

I teach throughput accounting to other CPAs for continuing education credit, and I've presented this work to the international Theory of Constraints community four years running.

  • CPA
  • CMA
  • CIA
  • CFE
  • CISA
  • TOCICO Certified Expert
Placeholder — needs real content Client results go here: the multi-year packaging engagement, in the owner's own words with real numbers, used with written permission. Do not launch without it — the proof is the page's whole argument.

Who this is for

A short list of conditions.

  • You own it. Closely held, or close enough that you can decide something on a Tuesday and have it be decided.
  • You expect this to end. A sale, or the next generation. You are not planning to ride it to the grave.
  • You are secure enough not to need the credit. The best version of this work is invisible from outside.
  • Custom, high-mix manufacturing. Machining, fabrication, packaging, printing — anywhere every job is a little different.

I take on a small number of these at a time, which is the only honest way to do it.

Writing

How job shops actually make money.

Each session is written up afterwards. One idea at a time, all of it standalone.

First pieces publishing shortly — the schedule above is where they come from.

All writing