Establishing Orbit
Capabilities
All capabilities Operations & Transformation Consulting Shop Floor Digitisation Machine Connectivity & Integration Custom Software, Data & AI Adoption, Support & Scale
Company
The Connected Floor The Orbit Method Industries About Book an Audit →
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How We Work

Four phases. One accountable partner. No handoff.

Transformation programmes die at the handoff — the moment the firm that diagnosed the problem passes it to the firm that has to solve it. The Orbit Method exists to remove that moment. The same team walks your floor, writes the roadmap, builds the system and stays until it's being used.

Phase 01 — Ground

Scroll through the phases — the visual tracks where you are. Scattered signal resolves into a stable structure as the programme progresses.

PHASE 01

Ground

See the floor as it really is. We spend time on your line, across shifts, watching the work. We map how things actually happen versus how the SOP says they do, trace where data is created, and identify every point where it stops moving. No assumptions carried in from another client's plant.

Deliverable  Current-state operations and data-flow map, quantified loss analysis, system landscape review.

Floor observationValue stream mappingOEE & loss analysisSystem inventoryStakeholder interviewsData breakpoint mapping
PHASE 02

Map

A roadmap with a business case attached. What to fix first, what to configure versus build versus buy, what it costs in time and budget, and what each phase returns. Sequenced so the first phase funds the argument for the second — because programmes that show a number moving in ninety days survive budget reviews, and ones promising value in year two rarely do.

Deliverable  Phased roadmap, costed business case, build-vs-buy recommendation, architecture direction, risk register.

Roadmap & phasingBuild vs buyTechnology selectionROI modelArchitecture designGovernance model
PHASE 03

Build

Engineered for your floor, not a template. Machine connectivity, a unified operational record, and digitised workflows across the functions in scope — connected into your existing ERP and MES rather than replacing them. Delivered in phased releases so something is in production early and extended against real feedback.

Deliverable  Working software in production, connected assets, documented integrations, operator and leadership interfaces.

Machine connectivityWorkflow configurationCustom developmentERP / MES integrationData platformPhased releases
PHASE 04

Sustain

Until the floor owns it. Go-live is the midpoint. We train supervisors and operators, redesign the daily management routine around the system, measure whether the numbers actually moved against the baseline, and stay on for support as the operation changes — so it scales beyond the first plant instead of decaying into another legacy tool.

Deliverable  Trained users, redesigned management routines, benefit realisation report, support agreement, rollout playbook.

Adoption diagnosticsOperator trainingDaily management redesignBenefit trackingManaged supportMulti-site rollout
Rules of Engagement

How we protect the work.

Five commitments that hold regardless of the engagement size. They exist because each one addresses a specific way these programmes go wrong.

01

Diagnosis before prescription

We don't recommend a technology, a phase or a vendor before we've been on the floor. Prescription without diagnosis is how plants end up with software that solves someone else's problem.

02

Named owners, not committees

Every deliverable has one accountable person on our side and one on yours. Shared ownership is unowned in practice, and it is the reason actions age quietly for months.

03

Numbers, not adjectives

Every claim we make carries a measurement or an acknowledgement that we can't measure it yet. Where a benefit didn't materialise, we say so — a partner who can't be honest about results can't be trusted about the next phase.

04

The floor gets a vote

Operators and supervisors are involved in design, not just training. If the people expected to use it weren't consulted, adoption is being left to chance.

05

Capability stays with you

Documentation, code ownership, admin training and handover are built into every engagement. We'd rather compete on being worth keeping than on being difficult to leave.

06

We say no

We turn down work where we don't think we'd add value, and we cap concurrent engagements deliberately. In a referral-driven market, one over-committed project is expensive for everyone.

Cadence

What working together actually looks like.

Weekly
Working session with your core team

Progress, blockers, decisions needed. Sixty minutes, agenda circulated beforehand, decisions logged. Not a status update read aloud from a slide.

Fortnightly
Demonstration of working software

From the first build sprint onwards, you see the actual system rather than a mockup. It keeps feedback grounded and stops divergence between what was specified and what's being built.

Monthly
Steering review with the sponsor

Against the roadmap and the business case: what shipped, what moved, what changed, what it cost. Variance discussed openly rather than smoothed over.

Per phase
Go / no-go decision point

Each phase ends with an explicit decision to continue, adjust or stop. You are never committed to phase three because you approved phase one.

Post go-live
Benefit realisation review

Measured results against the pre-implementation baseline, in the same units the business case used. Published internally whether the news is good or not.

Entry Points

Where an engagement starts.

START 01

Connected Floor Audit

The standard route. Two to four weeks on your floor and in your systems, ending in a costed, sequenced roadmap. Fixed fee, standalone value, yours to keep whether you build with us or not.

  • Current-state operations map
  • Quantified gap analysis
  • Costed roadmap
  • Build-vs-buy recommendation
START 02

Transformation Health Check

For programmes that already stalled. One to two weeks diagnosing why, what's salvageable, and what finishing it would take — including work started by someone else.

  • Root cause of the stall
  • Salvage vs. restart analysis
  • Re-scoping recommendation
  • Completion estimate
START 03

Line Pilot

When you need internal proof before a wider commitment. One line instrumented and digitised end to end, with a measured before and after that becomes your business case.

  • Single line, full depth
  • Baseline measurement
  • Measured result
  • Scale-up plan
Questions

Frequently asked

Because the split is where value evaporates. A firm that only advises has no incentive to check whether its recommendation is buildable; a firm that only builds has no view on whether the specification was right. When the same team does both, the roadmap gets written by people who know they'll have to deliver it — which removes a surprising amount of wishful thinking.
Yes. The audit is deliberately designed as a standalone engagement, and clients do take the roadmap elsewhere. We also take on build work where someone else did the diagnosis, though we'll usually want to validate the findings first — not out of territoriality, but because building on a diagnosis we haven't checked is how you inherit someone else's mistake.
From audit to a plant-wide deployment across several functions, typically nine to eighteen months depending on scope, plant complexity and how much connectivity work is needed. A line pilot produces measurable results considerably faster, in six to ten weeks.
Then that's the deliverable, and it's a legitimate one. A meaningful share of audits recommend process simplification, measurement discipline or data hygiene before any software. Digitising an unstable process locks the instability in permanently and makes it harder to fix afterwards.
Senior people. We're deliberately small, which means the person walking your floor is someone with operations or engineering experience rather than an analyst gathering material for a partner to present. It caps how many engagements we can run at once, which is a constraint we accept.
Start Here

Start with the audit, not the software.

A fixed-scope engagement. We walk your floor, map where data breaks down, and hand you a costed roadmap — whether or not you build any of it with us.