Delivery keeps slipping
The team works hard, but ship dates still slide and customer promises stay at risk.
We help owner-led manufacturers remove what buyers would discount.
LineShift is the system Patrick Dietz uses as a Fractional COO for
Sound familiar?
Does everything still come back to you?
Margins feel squeezed
Rising costs, rework, and constant firefighting eat the margin you quoted before the job ships.
You are the bottleneck
Quotes, schedules, hiring, and the hard customer calls all still wait on you to decide.
How it works
Lead Tight. Land Right.
Get tight on the few priorities that matter first, then land them 90 days at a time.
LEAD Tight · Baseline & prioritize
L
Locate
Patrick gets on the floor and into your meetings, numbers, and handoffs to learn how the operation really runs day to day.
You getBaseline
E
Evaluate
Patrick sizes up throughput, quality, delivery, and people against what A&D customers and primes expect, and finds where you lose time, margin, or trust.
You getGaps
A
Align
You and Patrick agree on the few operating priorities that matter most, and your leaders know who owns what.
You getPriorities
D
Deliver
Patrick hands you a
You get
LAND Right90 days · repeat
LLaunchDays 1–10
Patrick stands up the weekly operating cadence and scoreboard and starts the first fixes with your leads.
AAssessDays 11–30
We work root causes on the floor and test changes before we commit to them.
NNormalizeDays 31–75
What works becomes standard work, with clear owners and metrics, so the operation runs well without you or Patrick in the room.
DDemonstrateDays 76–90
We review results against the targets, then set the priorities for the next 90 days.
What buyers look at
Five areas buyers discount.
When a buyer or prime looks at your shop, these five areas decide how much risk they price in. The Buyer Risk Score rates each one. It is an operational readiness view, not a valuation.
1People & owner dependence
2Customers & contracts
3Operational performance
4Financial & systems
5Compliance, certifications & transferability
Including ITAR and cybersecurity readiness where it applies.
Start here · Free checklist
Find the weak spots in your operation.
Get the Owner’s Operations Check, plus one practical idea each week in The Value Shift.
88 questions across 11 disciplines, about 20 minutes. Then book a free
Enter your email and the check lands in your inbox, along with The Value Shift.
Includes our weekly newsletter. Unsubscribe anytime.
Moving into A&D
The path to AS9100 certification.
Primes and Tier 1s usually require a certified quality system before they buy. Here is the route from first decision to certificate, plus the gates AS9100 does not cover, like ITAR.
Gate 0: no named customer = don’t start.
For brokers, advisors & fractional leaders
Find the deal-killers before the buyer does.
Make an introduction.
Bring Patrick in before diligence. He finds the operational issues buyers discount and fixes them, so your deals close cleaner, faster, and closer to full price.
Protect the timeline
Ops issues found in diligence stall closings and cut price. We find them first.
Support the asking price
Documented,
Independent ops read
If you represent a buyer, get an operations read on the business before LOI.
I help owners understand what buyers would discount, and how to remove those discounts.
