Manufacturing SMEs · 20 to 250 people
Process automation for industrial SMEs
I remove the double entry, the shared spreadsheets and the hand-written documents in manufacturing SMEs of 20 to 250 people, in Wallonia and Brussels. A two-day audit, then fixed-price projects delivered in three to four weeks.
Thirty minutes, no commitment
Describe your flow. I'll tell you what can be automated and where I would start.
In most industrial SMEs I visit, the problem is not production. The machines run, people know their trade, customers get their parts. The problem is everything around it: an order copied three times, a schedule rebuilt every Monday in a spreadsheet, an inspection report retyped part by part, a shared spreadsheet meant to say where subcontracted parts are that nobody believes any more.
That time shows up nowhere. Not in the cost price, not in OEE, not on any dashboard. It is simply absorbed by four or five people in the office working late, and by team leaders spending their day hunting for information instead of using it.
That is the layer I deal with. No digital transformation, no ERP migration, no eighteen-month programme: narrow projects, priced in advance, that remove one specific task and are running three weeks after the start.
Who writes these pages
I am a mechatronics engineer and I have worked for years in industrial production environments. I have spent enough time in workshops to know that an entry screen you cannot fill in wearing gloves will not be used, that a team leader who was not consulted will undermine any tool, and that a project needing six months before it shows a result will be abandoned along the way.
Newstack is my company. There is no sales layer: the person who answers you is the person who does the work, and that is the only real advantage an independent has over a services firm. It is also its limitation, and I set that out below.
My background as a mechatronics engineerThe eight places the time goes
Here are the eight places time disappears, in the order I meet them. Each page describes the precise symptoms, the arithmetic of the cost, the approach, and above all what automation will not fix.
- Your customer orders are retyped by hand into your ERPBetween PDF attachments, customer portals and amendments by email, a sales admin team in an SME routinely spends 6 to 12 hours a week on this — and pays twice for every typo.automate customer order entry into the ERP
- Your inspection reports are retyped by hand, part by partAn inspector copying measurements into Word and Excel loses 30 to 60 minutes per file — and the ISO 9001 auditor always finds the record that is missing.automate inspection reports and non-conformances
- Rebuilding a traceability file takes you half a dayMaterial certificates, heat or batch numbers, inspection records, delivery notes: the evidence exists, but it is scattered across five different places.automate ISO 9001 traceability and audit preparation
- You don't know exactly what has gone out to subcontractorsSurface treatment, grinding, heat treatment, paint: parts leave the building, and the only tracking is a shared spreadsheet updated whenever someone remembers.track subcontracted parts without a shared spreadsheet
- Your quotes depend on one person and go out too lateIn machining and sheet metal, an eight to ten day response time loses jobs that your price would have won.automate estimating and quote generation
- Your supplier invoices are matched by hand, or not at allThree documents to reconcile, dozens of times a week: when time runs short, invoices get approved unchecked and price discrepancies slip through.automate supplier invoice matching
- Your production schedule is a spreadsheet rebuilt every MondayIt is wrong by Wednesday, nobody but its author can read it, and your customer lead times are quoted on guesswork.move from a spreadsheet schedule to reliable machine load
- Your production figures are written on a sheet next to the machineQuantities, cycle times, stoppages: the data exists on the shop floor, gets copied twice, and reaches the office a day late.collect machine data and real production times
How I work
1. A two-day audit, at €1,500
Two days on site, in your offices and in your workshop, following the real flows and timing what happens. You leave with a costed map of the time lost and a plan ranked by return on investment. The document is yours, whether you work with me afterwards or not.
see how the two-day audit runs2. Fixed-price projects, €8,000 to €15,000
A project deals with one flow, not your whole company. The price is set before we start and does not move. Delivery is in three to four weeks, in production, with your real data — not a mock-up approved in a meeting room.
see how a three to four week project runs3. You own what you paid for
The code, the documentation and the credentials are yours, and everything runs on your infrastructure. No monthly subscription, no per-machine licence, no closed platform you would have to keep paying to run what you funded.
more about my backgroundBy trade
The problems look similar from one trade to the next; the order of urgency does not. These pages set out where I would start in each trade, and why.
What I do not do
A list of limitations is worth more than a list of skills. It saves you a phone call if I am not the right person.
- I do not replace your ERP and I do not sell licences. If your ERP really is the problem, I will tell you, and it will be a project for somebody else.
- I do not program PLCs in production, nor modify the safety functions of your machines. That is a firm limit, for liability reasons that have nothing to do with commerce.
- I do not do predictive maintenance. Across an SME machine park, the promise is almost always larger than what the data actually supports.
- I do not take on projects above €15,000. Beyond that the scope is too wide to deliver in a month, and a project that drags loses its internal support.
- I do not work with more than three clients at a time. That is my real limitation as an independent: if you need a team available at all times, a services firm will suit you better and I will say so on the first call.
The questions I get asked
Where do we start if we have never automated anything?
With the flow that hurts most, not the easiest one. In practice that is almost always order entry or supplier invoices: those are the two projects whose result is visible in three weeks and countable in euros, which helps a great deal in getting the next ones accepted internally.
Do we need to change ERP or buy a production system?
No, in the vast majority of cases. Most SMEs I meet use only 30 to 40% of what their ERP or production system already does, often because a module was bought and then abandoned for lack of support. Recommissioning what exists costs less than rebuilding, and I will say so even when it shrinks my scope.
What does a whole programme cost?
The €1,500 audit gives you a costed answer for your case. As an order of magnitude: an SME of 40 to 80 people typically runs two to three projects in the first year, so €20,000 to €40,000 spread out, each decided separately after seeing the result of the last. You can stop after the first.
Are there public subsidies in Wallonia?
Yes. The regional « chèques-entreprises » scheme provides support towards consultancy assignments linked to digital transformation, at a rate depending on the size and age of the company. The main condition is using a provider approved for that type of voucher: ask me directly rather than assume, and check your eligibility with the Region before counting on it.
Does our data leave the company?
Not by default. Everything runs on your infrastructure. Where a component needs an external service, I flag it with the vendor's name and the hosting location, and I propose the in-house alternative where one exists. You decide beforehand, not afterwards.
What if you're no longer available?
You hold the code, the operating documentation and the credentials. Everything is written with standard components so that another developer or a local automation engineer can take over. It is the most legitimate question anyone can ask an independent, and it deserves a contractual answer rather than a promise.
Do you work across Belgium?
In Wallonia and Brussels with no travel charge. In Flanders, work is possible where the conversation can be held in French or English; travel costs are agreed before the quotation.
You show no client references.
Correct, and deliberately so: I will not publish any until I have explicit agreement from the companies concerned. Logos displayed without permission and fabricated testimonials are easy to produce and worth nothing. Ask me during the call and I will answer precisely on what I am able to say.
Let's talk for thirty minutes
You describe your flow, I tell you what can be automated, what cannot, and where I would start. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so during the call.