Starting a Smart Manufacturing consulting practice from the ground up is a bit like jumping onto a moving train — you need to get your bearings fast, build trust with new faces, and learn to solve real problems before you even find your seat. I’ve lived through this experience more than once, first in the mid-2000s when I helped build a smart manufacturing practice in the Americas, and then again a decade later in the U.S. with a new team. Here’s what those first 90 days actually looked and felt like, what worked, what didn’t, and what I wish I’d known sooner.
Day 1–30: Getting Your Bearings (and Keeping Your Nerves)
The first month is all about listening and learning. When I started, I didn’t walk in with a fancy playbook or a “disrupt the market” mindset. I spent most of my time leveraging and talking to my employer’s existing customers, plant managers, engineers, and IT leads at different sites. I’d ask about their biggest headaches — things like why their machine data was stuck in silos, why their operators still used paper checklists, or why nobody trusted the OEE numbers on the board. I learned quickly that the best way to earn trust was to show up, listen closely, and not pretend to have all the answers.
One of the first real lessons: don’t try to impress people with technical jargon. I once made the mistake of talking about “digital twins” and “cloud-native analytics” on day one with a plant team. They just wanted to know how to get their batch reports out of the historian without waiting until Monday morning. So, I started focusing on small wins — like helping someone pull real-time data from a PLC into a SQL database, or connecting a legacy SCADA system to a simple dashboard. Those early wins built credibility and opened doors for bigger conversations.
Day 31–60: Building a Core Team and Service Portfolio
By the second month, you realize you can’t do this alone. Building a practice means finding people who are both curious and practical — folks who can talk to a line operator in the morning and sketch out a cloud architecture in the afternoon. My early hiring strategy was simple: look for people who’d survived real manufacturing chaos and still had a sense of humor. I valued hands-on experience with things like OPC UA, SCADA, MES, SAP Manufacturing Solutions (especially SAP MII/ME), IIoT solutions, and a willingness to learn new tools. I also learned the hard way that hiring only “experts” doesn’t work — you need people who can adapt, because every client and every plant is different.
We started shaping our service portfolio around what clients actually needed, not what was trendy. For example, we offered rapid plant assessments, proof-of-value pilots (not just “PoCs”), and templates for integrating machine data into existing MES systems. We built a few accelerators — small, reusable code snippets and data connectors — to help speed up deployments. I kept everything as modular as possible because, honestly, every client wanted something a little different, and nobody wanted to pay for “reinventing the wheel”.
Day 61–90: Landing the First Projects and Learning Fast
The third month is when things get real — you need to win your first projects or risk losing momentum (and your team’s faith). My approach was to focus on solving one or two “hair-on-fire” problems for our first clients. In one case, we helped a large plant automate their downtime tracking, moving them from whiteboards to a real-time dashboard using data pulled from their existing DCS and historian. In another, we tackled a compliance headache by digitizing batch record reviews, which got us in the door for a broader MES upgrade later.
One honest opinion: most early consulting practices try to look bigger and more polished than they are. I learned that being honest about what you can (and can’t) do — and showing up to fix things when they break — is far more valuable than a glossy brochure. We lost a couple of deals to bigger firms, but we also won clients who wanted a team that would pick up the phone at 6 a.m. when a batch process failed.
What Actually Worked (and What Didn’t)
What worked: building relationships one at a time, focusing on small wins, and keeping our services practical and modular.
What didn’t work: overpromising, relying on “one-size-fits-all” solutions, and trying to scale too quickly without a solid delivery foundation.
I made plenty of mistakes early on. I underpriced our first few projects, thinking it would help us get in the door — it did, but it also meant working weekends to make the numbers work. I also spent too much time building fancy slide decks and not enough time on the plant floor. The best feedback I got was from a maintenance tech who told me, “If you can make my job easier, I’ll tell everyone you’re the real deal.” That’s when I realized: real value in manufacturing consulting comes from making someone’s day a little less painful, not from talking about “digital transformation” in abstract terms.
The Hard Truths (and a Few Surprises)
One unpopular truth: most consulting “frameworks” look great on paper, but fall apart when you hit the realities of a 40-year-old plant with outdated controls and a team that’s seen a dozen “transformation” projects come and go. You have to adapt, improvise, and sometimes just get your hands dirty.
On the other hand, I was surprised by how quickly word spreads when you solve a real problem. Our first big break came when a plant manager called his peer at another site and said, “These folks actually fixed our downtime reporting — you should call them.” That kind of organic growth beat any marketing campaign I could have planned.
Wrapping Up: Advice for the Next 90 Days
If you’re building a smart manufacturing consulting practice from scratch, here’s my real advice: Listen more than you talk. Hire for attitude and adaptability, not just resumes. Solve real problems and celebrate small wins. Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” And above all, remember that manufacturing is a team sport — your success depends on the trust you build, one person and one project at a time.
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