Manufacturing EBITDA

More EBITDA from the business you already run.

There is more EBITDA in your business than the numbers show today. We find it across six levers, build it on costs everyone trusts, and prove every pound in the P&L.

We work from the numbers to the floor: cost accounting, pricing, S&IOP (sales, inventory and operations planning) and the KPIs that run each shift. Nick has done this inside manufacturers: rebuilding cost accounting, pricing major contracts to the margin bar, and rolling out shop-floor KPIs and incentives that improved on-time delivery. For specialist lean or engineering programmes, we bring in a trusted specialist.

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This work usually starts at a moment: a margin squeeze, a new owner, a new MD or CFO, or a sale on the horizon. See which sounds like you.

The six levers

Six places margin hides, in the order we look.

Each lever comes with the signs to look for, what we do, and the measures we track in real units. Your Pinpoint phase sizes every one in £ before anything starts.

Price

Pricing discipline, recovering cost inflation and realising the price you set.

Signs you have a gap

Costs have risen since prices were last reviewed.
Discounts and rebates are agreed case by case.
Small orders, rush jobs and extras go uncharged.
Quotes are built on standard costs that are out of date.

What we do

Build a price waterfall from list price to pocket price, by customer.
Size unrecovered inflation and agree a recovery plan with sales.
Tie quoting rules and floor margins to current standard cost.
Set up a monthly price-volume-mix analysis your team can run.

Measures we track

Price realisation %
Unrecovered inflation £
Discounts % of gross sales
Quoted vs actual margin %

Commercial decisions

Product and customer mix, cost-to-serve, and which business to take or walk away from.

Signs you have a gap

Nobody can say for certain which customers make money.
A long tail of low-volume products ties up capacity.
Cost-to-serve (freight, set-ups, small drops) isn't measured.
Targets are set on revenue rather than margin.

What we do

Build product and customer margin, including cost-to-serve.
Agree with sales which accounts to grow, re-price or exit.
Set minimum order quantities, terms and SKU rules.
Give the board a clear take-or-walk-away rule for new business.

Measures we track

Contribution margin % by customer
Cost-to-serve £ per order
Revenue below target margin %
Tail SKUs % of sales

Productivity

Throughput, OEE (overall equipment effectiveness), and how well labour and machines turn hours into good output.

Signs you have a gap

OEE isn't measured, or nobody trusts the number.
Overtime is high while utilisation looks fine.
It isn't clear which line is the constraint.
Labour variances arrive each month with no explanation.

What we do

Define OEE once and measure it on the constraint.
Link capacity to the S&IOP plan, so shifts follow demand.
Track labour efficiency against standard hours that are right.
Point your operations team at the losses the data shows. Where hands-on shop-floor methods are needed, we bring in trusted specialists.

Measures we track

OEE % on the constraint
Labour efficiency %
Overtime % of hours
Output £ per labour hour

Benchmark: world-class OEE is 85% (90% availability × 95% performance × 99% quality). Typical everyday OEE is about 60%.
Source: Nakajima's TPM work, via Evocon (50+ country dataset) and Worximity.

Management information

The right KPIs, at the right cadence, trusted by the people who act on them.

Signs you have a gap

The monthly pack lands too late to change the month.
Meetings debate the number rather than the action.
Operations and finance quote different figures.
Key reports live in one person's spreadsheet.

What we do

Build a KPI tree from EBITDA down to the line and the team.
Set daily, weekly and monthly reviews, each with owners.
Write one definition per KPI and agree its source.
Automate the data feeds with our finance, data & AI work.

Measures we track

Days to management pack
KPIs with owner and definition %
Business-critical spreadsheets (count)
Review actions closed %

Timely delivery

On time, in full: schedule adherence and lead times customers can rely on.

Signs you have a gap

Stock is high, and orders still go out late.
Premium freight and expediting are routine.
The schedule changes every day.
Sales promise dates that production can't confirm.

What we do

Run S&IOP: one demand plan, one supply plan, one set of numbers.
Add rough-cut capacity checks before dates are promised.
Track schedule adherence daily, by line.
Set inventory policy by product, so cash sits where it earns.

Measures we track

OTIF %
Schedule adherence %
Lead time (days)
Inventory days (DIO)
Premium freight £

High quality

Right first time: less scrap, rework and returns, and a cost of poor quality you can see.

Signs you have a gap

Scrap is treated as the cost of doing business.
Scrap is booked as one lump, not by product or cause.
Credit notes aren't tied back to a root cause.
Nobody owns the cost of poor quality in £.

What we do

Build a cost of poor quality model in £, valued at standard cost.
Report scrap and rework by product, line and cause.
Give each category an owner and a target.
Link quality losses to variance reporting, so gains show in the P&L.

Measures we track

Scrap + rework % of sales
Right-first-time %
Returns and credits £
Cost of poor quality £

Scrap and rework alone run from about 0.6% of revenue (best) to 2.2% (weak). The full cost of poor quality is often put at 15–20% of sales.
Sources: Teeptrak (vendor, 2026); Reliamag (2026), ASQ-attributed.

The foundation

Cost truth: the numbers every lever stands on.

Get your costs right and the hard decisions get easier. You can't set a price, choose a mix or judge a line's productivity on costs nobody trusts.

Costing methodology

What goes into a product cost, and how. We agree a method that fits how you make things: standard costing as the base, activity-based views where they earn their keep.

Standard costs and cost rolls

Bills of materials, routings and rates that match the floor today. A cost roll on a set cadence, and whenever material or labour prices move.

Overhead absorption

The right basis (labour hours, machine hours or a mix), recovery rates that reflect real capacity, and under- or over-absorption reported where people can see it.

Variances that explain something

Price, usage, efficiency and volume variances, each with an owner. A variance should tell you what to do next, not just that the month was different.

Why everything sits on it

Price on a wrong cost and you either leave money on the table or lose the order. Mix on a wrong cost and you grow the customers that cost you most. Productivity measured against old standards rewards the wrong lines. MI built on it gets argued with, not acted on.

It's also where many improvement programmes struggle to prove their gains. If the cost base moves under you, a real saving can disappear in the variances. Cost truth is how finance can say, with confidence, "this one is banked".

Signs it needs attention

Standards haven't been rolled in over a year.
Gross margin jumps at month end after stock adjustments.
Large variances sit unexplained in the pack.
Sales and operations quote different product margins.

What you get: a costing policy, refreshed standards, an absorption model and a monthly variance pack your finance team owns.

Take the EBITDA Opportunity Scan

Illustrative Worked example

What the six levers could add up to.

A made-up £40m manufacturer, to show how we size an opportunity. It is not a client and not a promise.

Starting point: £40m revenue, £3.2m EBITDA (8.0% margin). Each line is sized from one measured gap, at conservative rates. Management information carries no £ of its own here: it is how the other gains get found, tracked and held.

Before£3.2m8.0% margin

After£4.4m11.0% margin

Uplift+£1.2m+3.0 margin points

Baseline EBITDA£40m revenue at 8.0%£3,200k
01 Price1.0% better price realisation on £40m+£400k
02 Commercial decisionsRe-price or exit the loss-making tail on true cost-to-serve+£250k
03 ProductivityConstraint OEE 58% to 66%, less overtime and weekend working+£300k
05 Timely deliveryOTIF 82% to 93%, less premium freight and expediting+£120k
06 High qualityScrap + rework 2.2% to 1.5% of sales (0.7% of £40m)+£280k
Cost to hold the gainsFor example, a cost analyst and reporting licences−£150k
Net EBITDA uplift+£1,200k
Improved EBITDA (11.0%)£4,400k

Baseline

3,200

Price

+400

Commercial

+250

Productivity

+300

Delivery

+120

Quality

+280

Cost to hold

−150

Improved

4,400

Illustrative. EBITDA bridge in £k, drawn to scale. Green bars are gains, coral is the cost of holding them.

Also available for investors

Acquisition support.

For private equity and trade buyers looking at a UK manufacturer, we apply the same six levers and cost truth to a target, before and after the deal.

This is a focused add-on to our main work, led by Nick personally. If you need full operational due diligence across a large group, we'll say so and point you to the right firm.

Size the opportunity

An outside-in and data-room view of the target's operational EBITDA opportunity, lever by lever, in £, with the quality of its costing called out.

Post-deal capture plan

Which levers to pull first, who owns them, and what it costs to hold the gains, so the investment case has a plan behind it.

100-day plan

The first 100 days in weekly steps: cost truth, quick price and quality gains, and the MI the board needs.

KPI pack

A monthly pack an operating partner can read at a glance, with every gain tracked against plan and checked by finance.

Next step

See where your margin is hiding.

The EBITDA Opportunity Scan is a short, free self-assessment across the six levers, with benchmarks. It gives you a first view of where to look, before you talk to anyone.

Take the EBITDA Opportunity Scan Book a call