One Quarter to Production

When we tell manufacturers we can have live inventory and ordering in 90 days, the usual response is skepticism. The last ERP project took 18 months and didn't finish. How is this different?

The answer is scope discipline.

What we don't do in the first quarter

We don't try to connect every system. We don't wait for a warehouse go-live. We don't create a universal schema. All of those things may come later, but they are not the wedge.

The wedge is a single, high-value inventory output someone actually uses. Usually it's one of three things: a live on-hand vs allocated view, a rare-parts unordered list, or a procurement exception queue that stops double-buys.

The 90-day shape

Days 1 to 20 are capture. We map how you count today (sheets, email, tribal knowledge) and stand up read-only extraction that touches nothing in production.

Days 21 to 50 are validation. We compare the live view to what the people who actually order already know to be true.

Days 51 to 75 are the live run. The queue sits beside the existing process. Procurement uses both. We fix what's wrong.

Days 76 to 90 are handoff. We document the workflow, train whoever owns the next PO, and establish a support cadence.

Why it works

The constraint isn't technical. It's organizational. By scoping to a single ordering output, we have one stakeholder, one definition of done, and one set of sources to touch. That's what makes 90 days possible.

The second and third quarters are where we expand. But only after the first one has proven that rare parts can actually get ordered in time.