Steve Shoulder is in the process of launching his book, 90 Days to Profits.



For the last 20+ years he has been doing business transformation and turnaround in manufacturing, including automotive with BMW, paper conversion in FMCG and cabling. He wants to share his knowledge and techniques he uses, and the new book 90 Days to Profits, available from 25 April 2017 captures the lessons from all his years of experience.

Steve proves that you CAN turnaround a business in 90 days. He challenges the big consultancy mind-set that it can take much longer.
Steve Shoulder's 90 days to profits technique
Steve Shoulder establishes the current reality. He establishes what needs to be fixed. His focus is people and processes. He gets a consensus to establish:
What is the ONE thing that a business needs to fix?
How does Steve fix what a client believes is unfixable? He says there is always a way. In business, people start making allowances every day. Rarely do they challenge the status quo. He asks WHY cannot you do that? Identifying the one thing that needs fixing is the cornerstone for achieving 90 days to profits.

Steve talks about a buy-in piece. He gets the most senior person. The senior person buys in to the ONE thing. This is what we are going to fix. Steve is then is positioned as the person who will facility the fix. This establishes the narrowness of the focus.
Fixing a vehicle manufacturer
e.g. One of the most spectacular results Steve had was for a commercial vehicle manufacturer of Double Decker buses in Blackburn, Lancashire. They:

had work in progress everywhere.
were making 3 per week but needed to make 5 to break-even.
had up to 65 production stops for the buses going through the process.
tied up too much of their money in work in progress and couldn't finance it any longer

So how did he do it? Blank piece of paper. He mapped their production process and determined they only needed 12 production stops, not 65. Concentrate on finishing the 60 buses they had in process, not taking any further in until they’d fixed the problem. He took 1200 hours out of the production build. In 12 weeks, he turned the entire business around.
The kit bag of tools Steve uses
He uses lean, theory of constraints and Kaizan. The people resident in these manufacturing businesses often know this stuff, but Steve taps into it and liberates their thinking. He helps build informal teams in the business. They know what needs what needs fixing they just don’t know how.

So how can manufacturers notice the erosions in performance exemplified by the bus manufacturers?

Steve asks the simple questions. He gets to trends. He’s not embroiled in history, decisions made etc. He will graph their output graph and then asks them what they see. People get so engrossed, they don’t step back and see what’s happening.

Steve relies on the people that are there. He brings a challenge. He taps into their people’s skills and experience.

In the above example, every bus was a mini project. It would go so far through the process then they’d realise they didn’t have the part they needed. So, they start with another chassis. Then they get the same result over and over.
Fixing a cable manufacturer
A Brand new facility with state of art kit, it was commissioned for several months, but had not turned a profit. Steve looked at the company and he determined the factory was designed to a budget not to an ideal setup.

He also knew that in cable manufacturing, there is a golden rule of manufacture – straight lines, not through 90 degrees etc. Unfortunately, 2 cable lines had 90 degree turns and went up and down. They had to remake cables several times to make a good one.

They had spent £40m building the plant. Steve determined in 3 days that it wasn’t fit for purpose. People knew but they hadn’t told the directors. It was an inconvenient truth.

The owner was a larger than life Texan.

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