For manufacturers whose delivery dates slip

Hit your delivery dates without the firefighting.

For manufacturers and distributors who ship late, carry the wrong stock, or run the week on expedites. We design the fix and build the system behind it, so the gains hold after we leave.

Book a Consultation → See how we work

✓90 minutes, no cost. You'll leave with a prioritised view of what's holding your delivery performance back.

Craig Bennett presenting planning software to a manufacturing team in a workshop

We build what we recommend

Dashboards, apps and automation, delivered and running in your business

10:1ROI · FLSmidth 5 wksto payback 113%IFOT up · Earlee

The symptoms

Sound familiar?

If your team spends its days reacting instead of running to plan, the cause is usually further upstream, in planning, inventory and the systems underneath.

Late deliveries

IFOT slipping, customers chasing, expediting becoming the norm.

Stockouts and excess

Out of the lines you need, while capital sits in the ones you don't.

Unstable planning

Forecasts miss, so planners quietly rebuild the plan in spreadsheets the MRP knows nothing about.

Constant firefighting

Every day reactive. No time to fix the cause.

Spreadsheets everywhere

Critical decisions running on email, memory and manual workarounds.

Disconnected systems

Two reports, two answers, and a meeting spent arguing about whose number is right.

Different symptoms, the same few root causes upstream: in planning, inventory and the systems beneath them. That's where we start.

Our approach

Strategy consultants are architects. We're the architect and the builder: we design the improvement, build the data and tools behind it and stay until your team can run it without us.

The fix holds because the people who design it also build the system behind it. Advice on its own tends to sit in a drawer. A system your team runs does not.

We work shoulder to shoulder with your team across the full value chain, from sales order to dispatch, improving the process, the data and the systems together so the gains hold.

Strategy House: aspiration through foundation, from operational performance and cashflow down to planning, inventory, digitisation and the capabilities that hold the gains

From the ASCI webinar From Strategy to Execution: Unlocking Real Business Performance, presented by Craig Bennett, 16 July 2025. Watch the talk →

Services

From the review to a plant that runs on plan and inventory.

Four connected practices that take you from diagnosis to a plant that runs on stable, on-time execution.

Operational Reviews

We assess the full value chain (order intake, planning, inventory, production and dispatch) to find exactly where delivery is breaking down.

Clear roadmapevery gap from order to dispatch, ranked by impact

Start a review →

Supply Chain & Operations Planning

Get the mix of inventory right, with sales and operations planning behind it. Replenishment, MRP settings and demand signals tuned to cut stockouts and excess and bring weeks-of-cover down without risking supply.

Earleestockouts down 27% and stock cover down 13%, together

Stabilise inventory →

Systems & Automation

Make the numbers trustworthy, then act on them: Power BI reporting, Power Apps and sales-order automation that retire spreadsheets and surface real-time operational visibility.

10:1ROI on PO automation at FLSmidth

Automate the manual work →

AI & Automation

Read customer purchase orders in whatever format they arrive, validate them against your pricing and customer records, and load a clean sales order to the ERP. Only the exceptions need a person.

Exceptions onlythe rest loads to the ERP without retyping

See what AI can take →

Why Centre of Business

How we work.

We measure success by what changes in your operation: reliable delivery, fewer firefights and gains that hold after we leave.

Manufacturing Specialists

Food, FMCG and inventory-heavy operations. We have seen your problem before.

II.

Payback in Weeks

We scope work to pay for itself in weeks, not as a multi-year programme. The case studies show the two times we have measured it.

III.

Your Team Owns It

When we leave, your people run the systems we built. We train them on it as we go.

IV.

Senior, Hands-On

You work with Craig, not a graduate team.

Case study

One engagement, start to finish.

How we automated FLSmidth's transactional supply and what it returned.

Diagram showing how one automation project moves revenue, margin, costs and invested capital, reducing cost of carrying inventory, defects and rework and working capital

FLSmidth · Automation

Paid back in five weeks, then 10:1.

FLSmidth asked us to reduce supply-chain costs, starting with purchasing. We automated their transactional supply end to end: purchase-order life-cycle management, inter-branch transfers and redistribution of excess stock, with business intelligence dashboards over the top and full ERP integration. Delivered under budget.

10:1ROI, PO component

5 wksto break even

Underbudget, delivered

Read the full story →

Earlee Products: S&OP end to end.

Earlee had grown into a Queensland Manufacturer of the Year without a formal sales and operations planning process. After the operational review we built the frameworks, apps and reporting behind S&OP. Delivery IFOT up 113%, stockouts down 27%, stock cover down 13%, revenue up 22%.

Read the Earlee story →

“

Because of this work, our supply chain is more agile, able to offer a higher service level to our customers and can do so at lower costs. Great job!

Darrell Hawkins

Regional Procurement Manager, FLSmidth

Get in touch

Three ways to start.

Keep running the week as it is. Commission a full review straight away. Or take the free 90-minute consultation, which sits between the two: you leave with a prioritised view of what to fix first, and you decide from there.

✓ 90 minutes✓ No cost✓ A prioritised action list

✉info@centreofbusiness.com.au
inCentre of Business on LinkedIn
AUBrisbane. On-site across South East Queensland, remote and on-site across Australia

Tell us what is happening in the operation. We reply within one business day. The consultation is free. Any project that follows is scoped and quoted before you commit.

Open the contact form →