US Market Entry Ā· Fractional COO Ā· Advanced-Technology, Aerospace & Semiconductor Manufacturers
Predictable operations for high consequence manufacturing.
Whether you are an allied manufacturer turning a prototype into a secure, on-shore US production line to win defense work, or a New England shop keeping its prime by defending the SPRS score it already signed, I install the operating system that holds.
A maximum of four concurrent engagements. Response within 48 hours.
The landing zone
New England is America's defense corridor.
The primes, the supply base, and the compliance depth are already here. When an allied manufacturer stands up a compliant US operation in the corridor, the work lands in New Hampshire. Engineering roles, machinists, quality and compliance staff, and the regional suppliers that feed them. That is the operator's argument for New England, and it is the state's argument for the work.
- 10ā30New Hampshire manufacturing jobs a single landed operation can seed within 24 months
- 2ā3Ćthe regional supplier and service roles each direct manufacturing job tends to support
- Top tierdefense and aerospace sit among New Hampshire's largest manufacturing employers
Projected local impact per landed operation, pending client review.
Two ways in
One operator, one method, two doors.
01
You are entering the US defense market
An allied manufacturer standing up compliant US operations to win DoD business.
02
You run a US defense manufacturer
A New England shop holding the prime relationship on a defensible SPRS score.
Fault readout
The faults you already feel.
Revenue is up and the floor is busy. The trouble is everything the ERP cannot see. These are the six faults most defense shops are running with right now, scored the way a buyer scores a part. Walk them one at a time.
The method
Standard Work 2.0, the operating system.
Standard Work 2.0 takes the discipline of lean standard work off the production floor and applies it to the whole company, back office and shop floor alike. It runs on four pillars. Each one ties an operational mechanism to a number the owner already watches.
IT / OT Convergence
One digital thread, not three networks
I merge the metrics coming off the industrial equipment on the floor into clean financial-dashboard visibility, so MES, ERP, and SCADA stop being three separate compliance liabilities and start being one auditable system the P&L can actually see. The auditor follows one thread, and it holds, whether I am converging three legacy networks or standing up a greenfield US site built compliant from day one.
Margin Engineering
Find the Hidden Factory, convert it to cash
Kaizen events aimed straight at the P&L. I map the value stream and eliminate the two things that quietly bleed a mid-market margin: the undocumented Hidden Factory errors the ERP never recorded, and the manual spreadsheet taxes standing in for a real system. That recovered capacity converts into cash conversion days, and the 20 to 40 percent loss Feigenbaum named becomes margin you can bank.
Human-in-the-Loop
AI handles the drudgery, people own the judgment
Smart workflows absorb the cognitive drudgery of paperwork, so a standard line worker gets upskilled into a strategic site lead instead of buried in forms. In a regulated environment, verified human judgment stays in the loop on every decision that touches data integrity. Automation augments the operator, it never replaces the operator.
Sovereign Tier
Compliance hardwired into the daily workflow
I hardwire ITAR, CMMC 2.0, ISO, and AS9100 into the daily build process, so the data borders sit where the controlled technical data actually lives and the auditor finds the controls already running instead of bolted on as a binder of PDFs. Built this way, the compliance posture stops being overhead and becomes a competitive moat: the digital thread is secure by design, and the controls are evidence the day an assessor walks in. For a foreign-parented US subsidiary, this is where the US-person data boundary lives. Controlled technical data stays inside the American operation, and transfers to the parent happen under DDTC authorization or not at all.
Proof of operating role
An operator, not an advisor.
- P&L owned
CEO and division GM history
Signed payroll and owned the P&L as a manufacturer's CEO and as GM of a foreign subsidiary's North America operations.
- 3 months
To ISO 9001:2015 audit-ready
A global OEM's New Hampshire facility, taken from stand-up to audit-ready in one quarter. In progress at a client engagement.
- $130K+
Software cost avoidance identified
At a defense ATE contract manufacturer: $75K in migration fees bypassed and roughly $55K a year in ERP license savings identified.
- 30 days
Operational triage to written plan
A defensible written plan in roughly five weeks at twenty hours a week, not a deck.
- US site stand-up
Foreign-parent onshoring, active
Standing up a compliant New Hampshire manufacturing facility for a global asset-tracking OEM with Canadian and US R&D. Engagement in progress.
- 4 engagements
Maximum concurrent, by design
Capacity is the constraint and the proof. Engagements under NDA.
I am an engineer who has operated. I speak P&L and shop floor in the same sentence, because I have stood on the floor at 6 a.m. and answered for the number at the board the same week.
Engagement models
Four ways to put the constraint in front of an operator.
30-Day Operational Triage
The full diagnostic. A defensible written plan in thirty days.
The owner who knows something is eating capacity but cannot name it, and needs a plan they can act on, not another opinion.
- Value stream maps and swim-lane process maps of how work actually moves, top of funnel to cash, including the ECO and CAPA workflows where engineering changes stall
- Gemba walks and targeted Kaizen events on the floor, not from a conference room
- Leading and lagging metric analysis across the four pillars: People and Culture, Process, Products and Services, Cash
Fractional COO
Embedded operational leadership without a full-time hire.
The founder who is drowning in operations and cannot justify a quarter-million-dollar COO, but cannot keep running the floor and the board at once.
- Ongoing operational leadership at two to three days a week, embedded with your direct reports
- The full Standard Work 2.0 install across the IT and OT divide, one auditable digital thread from quote to ship
- Real-time SQDIP reporting, quality tracking aligned to your prime's SCAR scorecards, and audit routines that hold the gains after I step back
Strategic Consultancy
Standard Work 2.0 installed against a specific high-stakes problem.
PE operating partners and leadership teams facing one defined event: forensic diligence on an acquisition, a 90-day P&L triage, or compliance hardening before a prime gate.
- Forensic operational due diligence that surfaces the risk a financial model misses
- A 90-day P&L triage that eliminates production variance and frees trapped working capital
- Compliance hardening for CMMC Level 2, an ITAR data enclave, and a QMS implementation to ISO 9001:2015 or AS9100, built into workflow rather than policy
Investor Readiness
The operational case an investor diligences, built before the first meeting.
The founder of a hard-tech, deep-tech, or defense-hardware company with real technology and a raise ahead, who can show an investor the product but not yet the operation that scales it.
- A diligence-ready operating picture: value-stream and unit-economics maps that show how the company gets from prototype to repeatable production, and what each unit actually costs to build
- The operational data room a technical investor asks for and most hardware startups cannot produce: the production and scale-up plan, the cost-down curve, the supply and capacity assumptions, and the compliance posture (ITAR, CMMC, AS9100) stated as fact rather than intention
- The operator's answer to the question that sinks hardware raises, can you actually build this at volume, backed by a build plan a technical investor can pressure-test
Featured collaboration
QIā¢ Plug-and-Play Electrical Architecture | General Inventions, LLC
An Investor Readiness engagement: the prototype-to-scale operation and investor-diligence case behind a patent-protected hardware system, the same work whether the hardware is a defense sensor or an electrical architecture.
Self-diagnostic
Six questions name the fault you are actually fighting. The result restates your own situation back to you and points to the right starting line. No email, no follow-up sequence.
Insights
The defense-manufacturing operations record.
Who I serve
Find the version of this that is yours.
Two situations, one operator. Each starts with what you stand to lose this year, then the mechanism that meets it.
NH / MA defense contract manufacturer
Keep the prime. Hardwire the compliance into the work.
Your prime cannot award you covered work unless your assessment is current and posted, and DFARS 252.204-7012 has been binding the whole time. CMMC Phase 2 was suspended on July 13, 2026, which moved the certificate and moved nothing else. The shop that loses the work loses it on a score it cannot defend, not on a date.
PE operating partner / diligence
Find the operational risk before the LOI hardens.
The operational risk a financial model cannot see is the risk that torpedoes the LOI or resets the valuation after close. By the time it surfaces in the first quarter of ownership, you have already paid for it.
Free tool
Score your CMMC Level 2 readiness in ten questions.
The same DFARS-flowdown logic that converts a stuck founder into a buyer, built into a scorer you can run in five minutes and forward to your CFO. It maps your answers against the NIST SP 800-171 control families and returns a readiness band with the gaps named in plain language. No sales call attached.
What it checks
- Do you hold or process Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)?
- Has a prime sent you a CMMC or DFARS 252.204-7021 supplier letter?
- Is your current SPRS self-assessment score posted and dated within the last year?
- Do you have a written System Security Plan (SSP) covering NIST SP 800-171?
- Are your MES, ERP, and SCADA environments mapped and access-controlled?
Ten questions, a readiness band, the gaps named in plain language. No sales call, no email required to see your score.
Capacity
I run a maximum of four concurrent engagements.
Strategic conversations for a full engagement are scheduled when an existing engagement reaches Phase 3. That is the real constraint, not a marketing line.
If your situation is time-critical, a prime supplier letter, an affirmation date you cannot sign behind, an LOI in diligence, name the trigger when you request the conversation. I respond within 48 hours with a realistic timing window.
Full engagement waitlist
Fractional COO and 30-Day Triage slots open as engagements reach Phase 3. Request the conversation and name your trigger. I respond within 48 hours.
Time-critical? Start with a paid consult, available this week
A paid, time-boxed working session on one defined problem, available without waiting for a full slot to open. If a prime letter, an affirmation you cannot sign behind, or an LOI is forcing your timing, this is the fastest way to put the constraint in front of an operator this week.
Request a Strategic Conversation
Name your trigger, a prime supplier letter, a CMMC window, an LOI in diligence. I respond within 48 hours with a realistic timing window.
Strategic Conversation
Weekdays only. Weekends and past dates are closed.