Recent Consulting Engagements
Addison McKee – Mentor to the President
I was advisor to the President of ADM, a supplier of pipe bending/end forming equipment, before and through the automotive downturn years. During that time ADM acquired its main American competitor, Eagle. During the downturn of '08-'09 sales dropped from a profitable $60MM to $15MM.
We deliberately contracted, including closing the UK factory while maintaining a sales and engineering presence. Was also instrumental in defining and developing a world-class, competitive, modular product line and helping ADM buy modern equipment to keep competitive.
The result: ADM remained solvent, yet continued to develop a world-class product line launched in 2010. Today its sales are way up, and it remains a preeminent supplier of bending and end-forming equipment.
Veridiam – Interim CEO
Veridiam is a manufacturer of metal components for the nuclear, turbine engine and medical industries. Knowing that one of the operations was not profitable, I concentrated on it. In 5 months we accomplished the following:
Had a new CEO in place in just over four months
Got Board approval for $1.3MM of capital equipment that is
crucial for the growth of the business
Planned a plant-wide move to a new larger facility
– All infrastructures were ordered and to be in place by the scheduled move
Leaned out the order entry and quoting processes
Restructured Customer Service and Manufacturing Management
to better serve the customers
Cut inspection hours down by 1000s of hours
Helped put Goals and department KPIs in place
Authorized state-of-the-art servers, software, and hardware
The result: Took EBITDA from zero to a rate of $3,240,000.
Smoke detector Patent Infringement suits – Expert Witness
Client was being sued by a large competitor for infringement on three patents. Conforti Consulting was retained as an Expert Witness and in the process conferred with counsel; uncovered prior art, formulated strategies and arguments. Was deposed several times advocating
the reasons the client's products did not infringe. A counter suit was filed for predatory practices.
The result: An amicable, low-cost licensing agreement on 3 patents.
Consultant and then Interim CEO
This company made large UPS housings and fuel tanks. It suddenly turned unprofitable; had recently taken more equity capital and needed even more. The PE Group that owned the company needed to know why.
We went to the company in January, 2011 and found a plethora of issues. During a 3 month engagement we found cost savings of about $2.7MM that could be instituted relatively quickly. In addition we learned that the cause of the turn to unprofitability was a design change in the fuel tanks that supposedly “fixed” a UL test problem.
It was determined that the steel buyer, had decided to buy a less costly grade of steel. No one else realized this. The President had fired all of the engineers because they cost too much and was left with draftsmen. The draftsmen’s’ solution to the UL failure (the fuel tanks permanently ballooned in a pressure test ) was to nearly double the thickness of the steel. This was OK’ed by the President. But it almost doubled the amount of the steel used and quadrupled the welding time. The President was replaced.
A consulting pressure vessel engineer was brought in and redesigned the fuel tanks using steel with a higher Yield Strength. The material cost 1 cent more a pound but half as much steel was needed. This cut the cost of material almost in half and the weld time by over 50% which would allow the company to become profitable again.
Significant Loss Reduction
TGE had increasing losses for three years. In the year Conforti Consulting was engaged at mid-year they were on track to lose $2.7 million on sales over $40 million. They lost $2.7 million that year. With the guidance of Conforti Consulting the losses the next year were reduced by over $2 million. The second year those losses were cut in half. The company is now profitable.
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