Find out exactly what's holding your manufacturing business back.All in a single day
An independent, experienced assessment of your operations, systems, and commercial function. You leave with a clear picture of your highest-impact constraints and a prioritised roadmap to address them.
You know something’s wrong. You’re just not sure what.
Growth has stalled, or it’s happening but the business feels like it’s straining to keep up. You’re working harder than ever, and the results don’t reflect the effort. You’ve tried fixing things, new hires, new processes, new systems, but the underlying friction doesn’t go away.
The problem with most advisory work is that it takes months before you understand what you’re actually dealing with. You’re asked to commit to a long engagement before anyone has properly looked under the hood.
The 1-Day Operational Diagnostic is built for exactly this moment. One focused day. A clear answer. No long-term commitment required.
A structured day, built around your business
Before the day, you’ll receive a short briefing questionnaire. Your answers shape where we focus, so the day is built around your specific situation, not a generic checklist.
I work through your operations, systems, team structure, and commercial function. I talk to the people doing the work, not just the leadership layer, to get an accurate picture of where friction actually lives.
At the end of the day, I walk you through what I’ve found clearly, directly, without jargon. You understand what your constraints are and what they’re costing you.
Within a few days you receive a written summary of findings and a prioritised roadmap of what to fix first, why, and what the impact will be.
Clarity you can act on immediately
Constraint identification
A clear picture of your highest-impact operational bottlenecks, not a list of everything that could be better, but the things that are actually limiting your growth or profitability.
Cost of inaction
Where it’s possible to quantify it, I’ll show you what each constraint is costing your business in revenue, margin, time, or risk.
Prioritised roadmap
A plain-English written roadmap with a clear order of priority showing what to fix first, what to defer, and what to stop doing.
An independent view
Delivered by someone with 30+ years of operational experience across Australia, the UK, Europe, and Scandinavia, who has no interest in telling you what you want to hear.
What a diagnostic actually finds
For Inner Bath & Shower, a 40-year-old national business, a diagnostic uncovered 25 improvements, and every one of them traced back to the same root cause: a business that depended on its founder. 16 of those improvements were delivered in the first 90 days.
“After two days with Drew, I said to him that it was worth more than months of coaching.”
Andrew Lawson, Managing Director, Inner Bath & Shower
$2,000 – $2,500
Fixed investment. No hidden scope.
The right fit matters, on both sides
The Diagnostic is designed for owners and directors of B2B manufacturing and supply businesses turning over $2M–$40M, based in or operating across Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
It’s most valuable if you’re at one of three inflection points:
Growth & scale
Revenue is growing but the business is straining. You’re hiring, but it’s not solving the underlying problem. You need to know where the real ceiling is.
Pre-exit preparation
You’re 12–24 months from a potential sale and want to understand the operational gaps that will erode your valuation before a buyer finds them.
Strategic expansion
You’re moving into a new market, product line, or channel and want an honest assessment of whether your current operations can support it.
30+ years operational experience. No junior consultants.
Drew Robins founded FBS Consulting to do exactly this kind of work. He’s the person who shows up on the day, not a project manager who briefs someone else. He has spent three decades working inside businesses across Australia, the UK, Europe, and Scandinavia, leading operational transformations, building sales infrastructure, and helping manufacturers and B2B companies move through the inflection points that define whether they grow or plateau.
30+
Years operational experience
$300K+
$3.4M
This is embedded operational work, not boardroom advice. I work inside businesses, alongside the people doing the work, and leave organisations with systems and capability that outlast the engagement.
You might be wondering
Is one day really enough to understand my business?
For most businesses this size, a well-planned day is enough to find the key constraints, and larger or multi-site operations get two. The aim isn’t to learn every detail of the business. It’s to find the few issues holding it back most and set a clear direction.
What if things are too chaotic right now?
Chaos is usually a symptom of the underlying problem, not a reason to wait. The Diagnostic is built for messy conditions, and that’s often where it adds the most value. If you’re going through a rough patch, that’s a stronger reason to act now, not later.
How is this different from a consultant writing a report?
The work is done by someone with 30 years of hands-on operational experience inside businesses, not an outside observer reviewing from a distance. You get a practical action plan, not a long report that ends up in a drawer. If you go on to a full engagement, the Diagnostic findings are its foundation.
What happens after the day?
Going further is entirely optional. Some owners put the roadmap into action with their own team. Others use it as the starting point for a fractional COO or CRO engagement. If you do choose to proceed, the engagement is scoped from the diagnostic findings and priced upfront.
Ready to find out?
Looking for a manufacturing operational diagnostic in a specific city? I work regularly with manufacturers in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.
Book your complimentary 30-minute conversation
We’ll talk through your situation, confirm the Diagnostic is the right starting point, and get a day in the diary.