Using a consultant is supposed to be simple: It is merely a person or organization hiring another person or organization to help them with a situation being faced. While this broad definition allows the day worker hired to do physical work in a plant to be defined as a consultant, I’m not unhappy with that broad definition. To me the day worker hired to work for a period of time is not that much different than the “computer consultant” that is hired to help write a specific computer program. They are both people who have attributes needed by the company hiring them.

Unfortunately, hiring a consultant, as more normally defined, is not as simple as hiring the day worker. When the day worker is hired, the company has a very specific and well defined area in which the day worker will perform and they know how to evaluate the worker’s performance. With consultants, this is not usually the case. Many times the area in which the company is seeking help is not well defined and even more often how to evaluate the consultant’s performance is not discussed.

Obviously, it is important for the company seeking help to know what they would like to happen as a result of hiring the consultant. If you’re investigating this web site with the idea that I may be able to help your operation, but haven’t really defined what help you would like/need, I encourage you to do that before you do anything else.

Once what help is needed is decided, it is most important for the person/organization seeking help to know as much about the consultant(s) as possible before they employ them. The company seeking the day worker to help catch up on typing needs to know about the day worker’s typing ability before hiring them. The company hiring a more typical consultant needs to know about the experiences, capabilities, and, perhaps even, the philosophies of the consultant. Does the consultant really have the ability to help in the area needed? Does the consultant’s expertise come from experience or from reading a book? Is the consultant a consultant because the company that hired him said so?

It is my hope that the information contained on this web site will provide you with the information you need to determine if Lobenhofer Consulting will be able to help you with your needs.

If you have gotten this far, you most likely assume that Lobenhofer Consulting is almost entirely a one man show. That is a correct assumption. On occasions, I will work with other consultants on specific projects, but it is important for you to know that if you decide to use Lobenhofer Consulting you get me Roy Lobenhofer and no one else. If the project is such that I feel that I cannot complete it in a timely fashion without additional help or I need expertise that I don’t have, such additions are always cleared with the client before they happen.

If someone would sit down and read the articles I’ve written, they would most likely get a better picture of my background, abilities, and philosophies than I will be able to present here. The problem with that is that it would take even longer and would most likely be even more boring than what I will present here.

Part Time Technical Director

From my point of view, the optimum consulting that I do is for small to medium sized iron foundries on an ongoing basis. In essence, I act as a part time technical director for such operations.

It is my belief that small foundries can not support full time technical directors. Since they can’t, when such operations hire technical people, the technical people soon get production responsibilities. The production responsibilities soon take precedent over the technical requirements of the job. Instead of learning about the process that will improve the operations next year, they are consumed with the problems getting castings out the door this week. It frequently ends up that the technical person becomes a high priced foreman.

An alternative to that scenario is to use a part time technical director. Since the part time technical director is not at the plant every day, it’s rare when he would get involved in the day to day operational problems like who is going to cover for the muller operator who is absent today. It is important, however, that the part time technical director be aware of what’s going on a day to day basis. I achieve this by having information regarding the operation faxed or emailed to me daily. In addition, I communicate frequently with my liaisons in the plants via the telephone.

In order to be the most help to the operations, I make myself available practically 24 hours per day seven days per week. Obviously, there are times when I cannot be reached immediately, but I’ve not yet had a situation where I haven’t been able to get back to a client within 24 hours of their call.

An on going relationship with an operation allows me to best implement my philosophy of not making rash changes. I have found the best progress is accomplished when changes are made slowly with a plan. It’s been my experience that too many changes are made in operations without fully planning out what is trying to be accomplished or how to evaluate whether the change has been successful.

While my consulting started as strictly technical, assuming the role of part time technical director allows me to gain insights into the personnel at an operation that can be helpful to the owners.

Problem Solving 

Many times an operation has a very specific problem that requires attention. A sudden onset of a particular type of scrap, a realization that there simply isn’t enough production , or a major customer telling an operation to get a problem fixed or there will be no more orders from them are typical reasons for an operation to call in a consultant.

Naturally, I do that type of consulting as well.

At times problems can be solved by a short walk around the operation. A recent call from a small operation about poor production and high refractory consumption from a cupola led to a short visit. Observing the operation led me to make two recommendations that the foundry followed. The production went up by 25% and the refractory consumption was reduced significantly.

Of course, not all problems can be solved with a mere walk around. My natural inclinations and experience lead me to pursue such problems with data analysis. Most operations have more data than they are aware. In most cases, using my experience and the computer programs that I’ve developed to analyze data, I have been able to resolve such problems.

As an example, a larger operation was faced with a defect that they had not been resolve. It seemed that no matter what they tried it either didn’t help at all or it helped for awhile and then the defect would come back. My analysis was able to prove to the management that the defect was actually caused by multiple reasons. That explained why the defect would be corrected and then come back. The cause for the majority of the failures was defined and corrected.

Quality Systems 

Another service I enjoy performing is to assist operations to install quality systems. Once again my philosophy is to assist the operation in first determining what their biggest quality problems are and then developing plans on how to address them. You can be assured that such quality plans depend heavily on quantifying, tracking, and adjusting variables and documenting processes. I discourage systems that depend heavily on “gut feel” and arbitrary evaluations of variables. While it is not possible to avoid these evaluations completely, I believe they are to be avoided whenever possible.

I do not assist operations prepare for ISO certification. While the quality systems that I install are easily put into a format that will comply with ISO requirements, I do not believe that all ISO requirements are significant to every operation.

Rates

Normal rates are $660 per day, portal to portal, plus expenses.  

Overseas travel is done business class or better and flight expenses are to be prepaid.

Special rates will be negotiated for extended projects and/or ongoing involvement with an organization.

Got a question? Want to put me to a test?

Write to me at  rwl@lobenhofer.com.