I — Datum
DIRECT SUPPORT — Operational Excellence Services
On-site event facilitation, fractional support, and full-scope system deployment. The method is the Toyota Production System and Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge, run to a 100-day plan the plant ends up operating itself.
II — Direct Support & Operational Excellence Services
SVEND was built by the practitioner who ran operational excellence at Fort Dearborn’s Fort Worth plant — running changeover and roll change across four shifts, applying Protzman’s integrated framework — during the years that plant set the world impression record on a Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 106, at roughly 82 million impressions against an industry average near 32 million. We support operational excellence, quality management and strategic planning.
SVEND offers partnerships through the South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Program (SCMEP) as a Technical Partnership Provider (TPP), and works with manufacturers across the United States through the federation of practices described below.
The method is the Toyota Production System and Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge, organized the way a Team of Teams organization operates, and run in three phases: shaping, execution and consolidation. The capabilities follow the problem in front of them: a 3P plant redesign pulls in line balancing and 5S, a throughput problem pulls in SMED and standard work, and an MDI deployment pulls in leadership standard work and the measures underneath it.
II-A Capabilities
- Value stream mapping — current state, future state, and the improvement budget that comes out of the analysis
- Kaizen events — facilitated daily and weeklong events against a defined problem
- SMED and changeover reduction — setup time split into internal and external work
- Line balancing — work content levelled against takt across stations
- Level loading and schedule analysis — heijunka, and what the schedule is actually asking the line to do
- Pull systems — kanban sizing and implementation in place of scheduled push
- Material handling and conveyance — routed delivery, waterspider routes and presentation at the station
- 2P and 3P — process preparation and production preparation for new lines and plant redesign
- Plantwide 5S — sort, set, shine, standardize and sustain as a plant program
- Standard work development — the documented method, its takt, its sequence and its standard WIP
- Supply chain mapping — the value stream extended past the plant fence
- SPC implementation and live monitoring — control charts on real characteristics, and watched
- Process capability studies — capability and performance indices with the estimator and its conditions stated
- Measurement system analysis — Gage R&R and the studies that establish whether a gage can tell two parts apart
- Design of experiments and machine centerlining — factor screening, optimization, and the settings a machine is returned to
- Calibration program review — assessment of an existing program, its intervals and its records. We review a calibration program; we do not perform calibration
- Wargaming and simulation — discrete-event models of a line or a decision before committing capital to it
- Hoshin kanri and strategy deployment — objectives cascaded and measured, with GAAP-compliant savings calculation behind the numbers, consolidated through Hoshined
- MDI deployment — managing for daily improvement, on paper or virtually through TaktiCore
- Leadership standard work — what each layer of management does daily, weekly and monthly, written down
- Operational excellence program management — the program run as a program, with a portfolio and a cadence
- Fractional operational excellence support — component-wise deployment held over time
- Management system effectiveness — a deep dive on whether the system produces decisions or paperwork
- Shingo Prize preparation — a five-year track toward assessment
- ISO 9001 quality system — deployment, improvement, evaluation and overhaul of an existing system
- HIRARC deployment — hazard identification, risk assessment and risk control as a standing system
- Safety program implementation — full program build or overhaul, evaluated against what the floor actually does
- Maintenance and reliability — TPM, autonomous and planned maintenance, and a blueprint maintenance program
- Critical spare parts — the inventory that decides how long a failure lasts
- Fleet maintenance and centerlining — one standard across an organization’s assets, with the SVEND platform holding the records
- Engineering evaluation — the engineering read on a process, a layout or a proposed change
- Energy assessment — consumption assessed and recommendations made against it. The assessment framework is still being built, so what it covers is worth asking about
- Training program implementation — the structure that makes a plant able to train its own people
- Recruiting — finding the people a deployment needs to survive after it ends
II-B What the Work Has Returned
| Throughput | 10–30% improvement from weeklong throughput events |
| Cost of goods | 3–4% reduction through hoshin kanri, stated conservatively |
| Setup | 30% reduction from SMED projects |
| Savings basis | GAAP-compliant calculation, so a reported saving survives a conversation with finance |
Ranges observed across engagements by this practice. What any single plant returns depends on where it starts, and the intake conversation is where that gets estimated.
II-C The 100-Day Plan
Full deployments run to a standard 100-day plan, the same one CrossPointe and Mayer run. It begins with value stream maps and leadership standard work, stands up hoshin kanri and MDI on top of them, and leaves a program the plant operates itself. Fractional and a la carte engagements take components of it.
II-D Training
Three programs, delivered against ILSSI accreditation and the Toyota Production System body of practice. Course materials and templates are being published progressively through Gemba Exchange, with a selection in playbooks.
| Champion | Plant managers and executives — the kaizen sponsor, who charters the work and holds the line on it |
| SME | Developing facilitators — the person who runs the event once the consultant leaves |
| Sigma | Open enrollment across roles |
II-E Industries
Packaging, healthcare, oil and gas, defense, public sector, health and beauty, and automotive. Nonprofit operations are served as well, including 501(c)(3) organizations running on volunteer labor where the constraint is rarely money.
- Full library of playbooks including Bills of Materials (BoMs)
- Pre-work and follow-up (30-60-90 days) calls included — customers own the plan and charter
- Value Stream Map → Value Stream Analysis → Annual Improvement Budget (GAAP-compliant savings) facilitation & support
- Custom API tools and virtual Hour × Hour plan-to-actual boards (varying sizes available)
- Training and leadership development programs (custom branding, tailored to partner needs)
- Multi-site executive support for OpEx huddles, Friday report-outs, Hoshin consolidation and more — consolidation runs on Hoshined
| Frameworks | TPS · Six Sigma · SPC · Protzman (BASICS) · 2P/3P |
| Infrastructure | Scheduling · Team Support · Hiring Support |
| Rate | $2,000/day plus travel & expenses |
| Reduced Rate | Available — see below |
| Partnership | SCMEP Technical Partnership Provider (TPP) |
| Hoshin Consolidation | Hoshined |
A manufacturer working to keep people employed, or to add headcount, can apply for a reduced day rate. Operational excellence is often sold as a way to need fewer people; that is not what this practice is for, and the rate reflects it.
There is no form to fill in beyond the one below. Say what you are trying to protect or build in the project intake and we will talk about the rate directly. Reductions are agreed case by case, in writing, before any work starts.
The multi-site hoshin consolidation above is not done by hand. Plants fill in the workbook they already fill in; Hoshined reads it as submitted and returns the consolidated month the same day, with nobody re-keying a cell.
hoshined.com →