HomeDirectionsStop the leaks
Direction 02 · mid-size and large business

Stop the leaks

At a 7% margin one lost ruble costs fifteen rubles of revenue. To recover ₽100k of losses you have to sell ₽1.4m. That is why stopping the leaks is almost always faster and cheaper than selling more.

— Your industry
Sound familiar?

Six signs that money is leaking

01

Turnover holds or grows, yet there is no cash in the account. Nobody can say exactly where the profit goes.

02

The shop asks for new equipment, while you suspect the existing machines idle half the shift — and have no way to check.

03

You are short of people and there is nobody to hire. Yet no one has measured what anyone actually does during a shift.

04

The warehouse is packed with WIP and materials. The working capital you badly need is frozen in it.

05

Cost by product and by line is estimated “roughly”. Where you earn and where you lose is unknown.

06

You have tried improvement before. Six months after the consultants left everything was back where it started.

What we do

Five sources of recovered profit

Each direction can be taken separately. Together they form a loop that holds the result after we leave.

01

Operational excellence and lean manufacturing

Classic lean, but locked in digitally. I map the value stream, build the VSM and a waste map, and measure operation times. The output is a number in rubles and an honest answer on whether this process is worth touching at all. Then we rebuild one flow end to end and run PDCA cycles.

5-day diagnosticA priced waste map, the top ten hot spots, quick wins and a roadmap
Pilot flowOne area rebuilt deeply: takt time, pull, line balancing
Standardised workVisual SOPs a new hire sees and cannot confuse
Poka-yokeError-proofing: the process physically prevents doing it wrong
TWI trainingCoaching at the workstation, not lectures in a classroom
Rollout and handoverInternal trainers, a development unit, running without us
GAZ Group case: defects −70%, operation time −27%, changeover −18% after two weeks of work on the line.
More on lean manufacturing →
02

Automation, AI and dashboards

Where a human relay of information used to sit, an agent takes over. Models are deployed on premise, inside your own perimeter — no cloud, no data leaving the building. We write the software ourselves, so we own the result end to end.

AI agents on routine workIntake and routing of requests, reporting, work acceptance by photo
Executive dashboardA weekly summary with losses in rubles and instant deviation alerts
Apps built for the processRounds, photo-verified checklists, work orders, standards in the phone
Computer visionPeople and equipment utilisation from cameras, quality, safety compliance
Integrations1C, CRM, telephony, warehouse — data stops living in five spreadsheets
On-premise modelsEverything inside the plant perimeter, no external subscriptions
Zhilishchnik case: an AI agent listens to the working chats, creates requests itself and notifies the crews — freeing more than half of the dispatcher's time.
More on automation and AI →
03

Finance, unit cost and procurement

I do the economics myself: build the P&L, break down unit economics, model the business case for the direction. Without that, any optimisation is guesswork. Separately I work on releasing working capital: at current interest rates, money pulled out of the warehouse is cheaper than any loan.

Management accountingThe real picture: where you earn and where you run at a loss
Unit costBy product, by line and by client, not an average across everything
Working capitalStock, WIP, receivables — how much is frozen and how to release it
ProcurementCategory analysis, supplier terms, eliminating over-ordering
Tax burdenLawful optimisation together with a tax adviser
Unit economicsEvery direction costed separately, before any investment decision
Effect: for the first time the owner sees which directions feed the business and which live off the others. After that, decisions take a week instead of a year.
More on finance and unit cost →
04

Team manageability

This is not about “cutting headcount” but about understanding who actually does what and how many people this volume really needs. With the current talent shortage that matters more than layoffs: it usually turns out that twenty-five people do the work of forty, while the rest compensate for someone else's chaos.

Headcount normsHow many people the volume requires — calculated, not estimated by eye
Role mappingWhat each role does, what it produces, where the duplication sits
Org structureHorizontal links instead of vertical approval chains
Procedures in the phoneThe standard reaches the employee on shift instead of sitting in a folder
OnboardingA new hire reaches target in weeks instead of months
Internal trainersTraining continues without an external contractor
Important: change follows the Adizes methodology — without upheaval or conflict. We work through it together with the employees rather than over their heads, so support appears on the floor immediately.
More on team manageability →
05

Corporate culture and engagement

The most underrated part. As long as improvements are handed down from above, they last exactly as long as someone watches them. When an employee submits a proposal from the shift, sees what happens to it and gets paid for it, the mechanism runs without a supervisor.

Idea factorySubmission from the shift, fast review, implementation, transparent reward
RecognitionPublic credit for the author works as well as a bonus
Mission and valuesNot a poster on the wall but decision rules used on the floor
Working with resistanceA workstream of its own, not an add-on to the project
Training managersHow to lead change without burning the team out
Rollback protectionEngagement plus visual standards plus poka-yoke
Rostec case: improvement flow +233%, engagement +32%, net profit ×2 — through optimisation alone, with no new business lines opened.
More on corporate culture →
How we start

The number first, decisions second

Шаг 01

Diagnostic

Five days on site. A waste map priced in rubles and a set of priorities. If it is not worth doing, we say so plainly.

5 days
Шаг 02

Pilot

One isolated area. If it does not work, rollback takes days and the rest of the plant never notices.

3–6 months
Шаг 03

Digital loop

Monitoring, dashboard, standards in the phone — the things that stop it sliding back.

in parallel
Шаг 04

Handover

Internal trainers, a development unit, procedures. After a year you can choose not to renew.

onward
Questions

Frequently asked

I am afraid you will break a working process
That is why we start with a single area rather than the whole plant. The pilot flow is isolated: if the solution does not work, rollback takes days and the rest of production never notices. We only scale what has already proven itself.
Our equipment is old, there is nothing to read data from
Age is not an obstacle. Where there is no CNC or sensors we count from cameras that are usually already installed: the system sees the work zone, the operator and whether work is happening. A general-purpose machine from the eighties is monitored the same way as a new machining centre.
People will resist
They will, if change comes through fines and orders. We work through engagement: employees find the losses at their own workstations and receive recognition and money for it. In the Rostec project engagement rose 32% — that is the mechanism, not a side effect.
Before paying you — is there state support?
Yes. The federal labour productivity programme accepts companies in core non-resource industries with revenue above ₽400m — support there is free, and if you qualify we will tell you to go there. If you do not qualify on revenue or industry, or you have already been through it and want to go further, then come to us.
What does it cost and can we pay afterwards?
The price is fixed per stage and quoted after the diagnostic. On selected projects payment by achieved result is possible — we discuss it once both sides can see the number and the measurement method is agreed.
HEIM Club

Your losses reviewed among peers

A private club for business owners: live offline case reviews in central Moscow, a table assembled around your request, business games and access to a team of practitioners. Everything discussed stays inside the circle.