Loss and Waste Reduction for Manufacturers
Finance calls it shrink. Operations calls it waste. We help you cut it.
Fixed-price engagements for manufacturers from $30M up. One number both teams sign in eight weeks, then the process fixes that make it move.
37.7%
Less loss and waste at one client, like for like
8 wks
To one number Finance and Ops both sign
$5,000
Fixed-price assessment to start. Credited against the build.
The Problem
Same plant. Same quarter. No agreed number.
Finance
The general ledger
Its own number
Operations
Production reports
Its own number
Sales
Customer credits
Its own number
Warehouse
Inventory variance
Its own number
The problem isn't usually that you lack data. It's that your organization lacks agreement on what the data means. Finance measures shrink as a P&L variance against budget. Operations measures waste as units lost in production. Sales tracks it as customer credits and returns. IT sits somewhere in the middle, maintaining systems nobody fully understands.
You have the data. You have smart people. What you don't have is shared definitions. Without them, every decision is negotiated, every report is questioned, and every improvement stalls.
What It Costs
The disagreement has a price. Here is how to estimate yours.
$375K
One point of COGS
At a $50M manufacturer running 75% cost of goods, one percentage point is $375,000 a year. Loss and waste with no owner does not shrink on its own. Run it with your numbers: revenue, times COGS share, times one point.
Weeks
Hidden labor
Every spreadsheet whose job is reconciling two reports is skilled hours spent proving a number instead of moving it. Month after month, in every department that keeps one.
0
Decisions made
A meeting that argues about whose number is right is a meeting that did not decide anything. The cost is not the hour. It is the quarter that passed before anyone acted.
Where It Starts
Three ways this shows up. One fix underneath.
Our Approach
We don't start with dashboards. We start with agreement.
We sit with Finance, Operations, IT, and the functional owners: warehouse managers, production supervisors, sales leadership. We ask what loss and waste means as each of them sees it, how they track it today, and what decisions the number needs to inform. The goal isn't a dashboard. It's an organization that acts on the same number, and a continuous-improvement rhythm that keeps moving it after we leave.
01
Align
Every department defines the metric together. Controllable loss gets separated from non-controllable loss, so owners only carry numbers they can actually move.
02
Quantify
We trace each metric to its source systems and reconcile it against the P&L. One number, one source of truth, defensible in any meeting.
03
Fix the process
When the number points at a process, we fix the process: standardized reason codes on inventory adjustments, cycle counting instead of a year-end scramble, purchase orders that separate capital from expense, the ERP used the way it was configured to be.
04
Own the rhythm
Every metric gets a named owner and a Plan-Do-Check-Act cadence: set the target, run the plan, check the number, adjust. The reporting keeps that loop honest long after the engagement ends.
Real Results
37.7% less loss and waste. Measured like for like.
At one food manufacturer, this approach delivered a 37.7% year-over-year reduction in loss and waste, with every loss account improving. That figure is normalized: commodity price movement and a one-time acquisition write-off are excluded, and the same months and locations are compared in both years. More importantly, it replaced a culture of siloed Excel tools and department-versus-department meetings with a team-oriented approach to data and problem-solving.
Each owner now manages a specific metric and develops plans to improve it. Finance and Operations still speak different languages, but they're looking at the same number and drawing the same conclusions. That alignment is what drives results.
Read the full case studyKettle River BI was instrumental in helping us break through the hundreds of Excel-based data management solutions that managers had accumulated... Kettle River was truly transformational for our organization, both in the way we looked at data and the way we worked together.
Packaged food manufacturer, Pacific Northwest
Available as a reference. Ask us on the call.
Mitch Cauthron
Founder & Principal, Kettle River BI
Who You're Hiring
You hire Kettle River BI. You work with me.
Ten years inside food manufacturing across accounting, finance, and operations, building the processes and owning the outcomes, not just the reports. Now I do that work from the outside, and I learn your ERP by reading how the data moves through it.
Every engagement starts with me and stays with me. I scope it, I run the sessions where your departments agree on the numbers, and I sign off on everything that ships. Project support comes in as the work needs it, under my direction, so you get one accountable person without paying for a bench.
15+
Years in finance and analytics
10+
Years inside manufacturing
1
Accountable point of contact, start to finish
We lacked effective BI and KPI tools to monitor production and financial performance. Kettle River BI spearheaded the adoption of Power BI dashboarding and KPI tracking for us. With the new custom solution, we have real-time visibility into our operations, enabling data-driven decisions and continuous improvement strategies to thrive in our business.
VP of Operations, Oregon Ice Cream
Previously, what took days now can be done in minutes. As a result, the budget was completed weeks ahead of what had been done in the past allowing for a deeper analysis than has ever been done before!
CFO, Tillamook Cheese
Kettle River BI automated our company's budget upload and reporting process. The budgeting tools he created were highly functional and incredibly intuitive. Thanks to Mitch's efforts, the data gathering process that had been disjointed and confusing became seamless. Our new, highly automated budgeting process literally saved our budget team weeks of hard work!
Director of Finance
The most unique attribute that Mitch possesses when bringing data to life is the marrying of his business and accounting acumen with his data mining abilities. Mitch can go beyond the surface level of a request and incorporate additional, meaningful data that will add value to the analysis. I would not hesitate to recommend Mitch to any of the clients I work with.
Director of Finance, Goodfellow Bros Inc.
Every engagement is fixed-price, and the prices are published.
A $5,000 two-week assessment (loss and waste, inventory accuracy, or AI readiness), a $35K to $55K Foundation Build priced from its findings, and $3,500 a month to keep it running. No hourly rate, anywhere.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Do you build dashboards?
What tools do you use, and do we have to buy anything?
How is this different from other BI consultants?
What's the timeline?
Is our data ready for AI?
Do you require an ERP system?
Can you work with our IT team or do you replace them?
What's the investment?
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Real examples of the numbers manufacturers argue about: loss and waste, OTIF, inventory accuracy, AI readiness. How each one is calculated, where it goes wrong, and what to do about it. Free, and you can unsubscribe anytime.
You talk to Mitch.
Stop arguing about the number. Start moving it.
If your leadership team spends half its meetings deciding whose spreadsheet is right, a 30-minute discovery call will tell you whether this fits. We ask the same questions we asked the client in the case study, and you will know within minutes whether a $5,000 assessment is worth two weeks of your team's time.