The Client — Hargrove Precision Components is a family-owned manufacturer of industrial fasteners and mechanical assemblies, operating out of two facilities in Ohio. Founded in 1978, the company had served the automotive and aerospace supply chain for decades. By 2024, they were under serious pressure.

The Situation — Three major contracts had been lost in 18 months — all citing price. Revenue had dropped from $22M to $17M. The family assumed the problem was competition from low-cost manufacturers in Asia. But when we looked closer, the story was different.

The Challenge — Their cost structure had ballooned quietly over a decade of growth. Machine downtime was averaging 34% across their two plants. Inventory management was still being handled through spreadsheets. And their quoting process — the first thing a prospective client experiences — was taking 9 business days, when competitors were responding in 2.

They weren't losing on price. They were losing on speed, trust, and margin inefficiency they didn't know they had.

What We Did — We embedded a small team across both facilities for three weeks. We mapped every production workflow, tracked machine utilization in real time, and interviewed floor supervisors, procurement leads, and the sales team. What we found was a business full of talented people working around broken systems.

We implemented a lean production scheduling model, introduced a digital inventory management system integrated with their existing ERP, and rebuilt the quoting workflow from 9 days to 36 hours. We also identified $3.8M in recoverable cost — primarily from supplier contract renegotiation, scrap reduction, and elimination of redundant processes.

The Results — Within 8 weeks, production cycle times had dropped by 60%. The quoting turnaround improvement alone resulted in three new contract wins within the following quarter. Hargrove has since re-bid on two of the three previously lost contracts — and won one back.