Launch lead time
All work−50% −35% 9 mo
Case 01 · Consumer hardware · Anonymised
From manual planning to a hardened operating spine
A mid-market operator with a product customers loved and an operation that could not keep up. Nine months to one connected planning-to-fulfilment backbone, a weekly resilience view and a launch cadence roughly twice as fast.
Order exceptions
To hardened operations
CLIENT
Consumer-hardware manufacturer (identity withheld)
COMPANY SCALE
$90–130M revenue
INDUSTRY
Consumer hardware · direct and retail channels
ENGAGEMENT
9 months, senior team of four
MEASUREMENT
Weekly KPIs vs. a 12-week pre-engagement baseline
The problem
The product scaled. The operation underneath it did not.
Two new markets were planned for the year ahead. On the operation as it stood, each one would have added headcount and cost margin.
Planning lived in spreadsheets
Demand, build and purchasing plans were rebuilt by hand every week. Nobody could say which version was current.
Three systems, no shared truth
Orders, inventory and fulfilment each held a different stock position, reconciled overnight at best.
Every launch broke something
A new SKU meant manual setup in each system, so launch lead time grew with the catalogue.
Exceptions had no owner
Stuck orders surfaced when a customer complained. Exception volume rose in step with order volume.
The solution
Diagnose, build, operationalise — one accountable team.
STAGE 01
Diagnose
A two-week operating diagnostic across demand, planning, procurement, assembly and fulfilment. We named the eleven largest constraints, put a business cost on each, and sequenced them into a 90-day plan.
STAGE 02
Build
One planning-to-fulfilment integration layer built alongside the client team, with a single stock and order position. One of the three legacy systems was retired. SKU setup became one step instead of three.
STAGE 03
Operationalise
Exception handling given a named owner and a dashboard. A weekly operating review installed with leadership, plus the playbook, cadence and roadmap handed to the client's operations lead.
The outcome
Measured against the twelve weeks before we started.
| MEASURE | BEFORE | AFTER |
|---|---|---|
| Launch lead time | 12 weeks | 6 weeks |
| Order exceptions (per 1,000 orders) | Baseline | −35% |
| Systems of record for stock | 3 | 1 |
| Weekly plan rebuild | Manual, ~2 days | Automated, reviewed in 90 minutes |
Leadership now runs the business from one weekly view, and the client's own operations lead owns the cadence. Skandor left at handover.
HOW THIS CASE IS REPORTED
The client is not named: every Skandor engagement runs under NDA, so identities stay confidential and only the shape of the work and the measured numbers are published. Figures compare a verified 12-week pre-engagement baseline with a 12-week post-engagement measurement, agreed with the client before the engagement began. References are available under NDA and can be arranged after a first conversation.