Three movements in every engagement. We diagnose operational problems at the source, engineer the fix alongside your team, and leave the capability behind. A boutique practice for food, biotech and pharmaceutical manufacturers across NL and EMEA.
Three movements in every engagement. The discipline that runs underneath every mandate we take - a working cycle in the lineage of PDCA, sharpened for regulated manufacturing.
We diagnose at the source.
We start on the floor. Data, people, process. Before any change goes in, we understand what is actually happening - and what is causing it. No solutions before symptoms are mapped to root causes.
We engineer the fix with your team.
The change is built alongside the people who will run it. We bring the Lean and Six Sigma toolkit, the rigour to apply it where it actually moves the line, and the patience to do it properly the first time. No PDFs in place of work.
We leave the capability behind.
Every engagement ends with the improvement living inside your team. Standards documented, cadence in the calendar, owners named. Trained, coached, and operating without us. We are designed to depart - and to leave excellence behind.
A cycle, not a checklist. When conditions change, the work returns to See and we run the loop again - that is how operational improvement compounds instead of decays.
These are the recurring operational pressures we see across food, biotech and pharma manufacturing - the work we are built to take off your desk.
The seat is open, the work won't wait, and there is no obvious internal successor ready to step in this quarter.
Orders pile up, promised dates slip, customers notice. The team is working harder than ever and nothing seems to clear.
The labour market is thin. The operators you do bring in take months to be productive, and some leave before they get there.
The people you finally got to productive level walk out, taking the tacit knowledge with them and resetting the onboarding clock for the next hire.
The easy wins are taken. The hard ones aren't getting done because nobody owns them end-to-end.
Unplanned stops keep coming back. Quick fixes go in. The root cause was never properly closed, so the issue returns every quarter.
First-pass yield is trending the wrong way. Raw material cost pressure is real and waste is the silent variable nobody can defend in the next review.
Setup, cleaning, and product changeovers eat shifts. The capacity is hidden inside the changeover clock, and SMED has never been done properly.
CAPAs don't close cleanly. Deviations creep up between inspections. The next audit feels less like a check and more like a fire drill.
Procedures on paper say one thing, the shop floor does another. Training shrugs and improvises. Auditors notice. New hires inherit the gap.
Work-in-process pools between stations. Lead times creep. Hot orders skip the queue and disrupt everything else. The line works hard, the throughput says otherwise.
KPIs exist but they don't change behaviour. Shop-floor reality and the leadership dashboard tell different stories.
If two or more of these landed, the next section is for you.
Every mandate begins with the problem on your desk, not with a fixed scope. We pick the right tool, embed with your team, and leave the capability behind. Always to the standard regulated environments require.
When you need a defensible read on what is really going on.
A rigorous, evidence-based assessment of your operation. We examine the data, walk every relevant line, and listen to the people who actually run them. What you receive is a prioritised plan grounded in what your operation is actually doing. Defensible to your board, useful to your team. No shortcuts.
When the team is too thin for the next step.
Competency frameworks, structured onboarding, internal Yellow / Green / Black Belt pathways. We help you build a team that is line-ready sooner, and produces work to a standard you, your customers, and your auditors can trust.
When leadership runs on opinions.
Daily and weekly performance rhythms. KPIs that change behaviour, not just decorate a dashboard. Visual management that makes the right conversation happen at the right level, every day, with the discipline regulated environments require.
When cost pressure is real but improvement is a wishlist.
We help you build a real Cost Improvement Programme: prioritised projects, named owners, savings tracked against the P&L every month, calculated by a method your CFO and your auditors both accept.
Because audits should be a non-event, not a fire drill.
SOP architecture, deviation and CAPA discipline, change-control hygiene. Audit-readiness built into the way you work, not improvised the week before the inspector arrives.
When a key seat is open or a transformation needs an owner.
Plant Manager, Operations Manager or OE Lead, embedded with your team for the window you need. Full operational ownership, the standards of practice your environment demands, and a structured handover when the work is done.
When you cannot see where the time goes.
End-to-end mapping of the flow from raw material to finished product. Current state, future state, and a prioritised action list of what to remove between the value-adding steps. Done on the floor with the people who run the process, not in a boardroom with post-its.
Every output we produce is the output we would want to live with: auditable, defensible, durable. In regulated manufacturing, anything less is a future incident with a date on it.
Most operational programmes pick one of these three and ignore the others. The work compounds when they reinforce each other, and we install them in the right order for your situation, using the Lean and Six Sigma toolkit that has stood the test of forty years in regulated manufacturing.
Operations is, first, a people system. Before any KPI moves, the people in front of the line need clarity on what good looks like, the standards to deliver it, and a path to grow into more.
We map competencies role by role, build SOP architectures that survive contact with the shop floor, and stand up internal Yellow / Green / Black Belt pathways so that improvement becomes a habit, not a project.
A factory runs at the rhythm of its meetings. When the rhythm is wrong, problems escalate too late or too high. When it is right, the floor solves what the floor can solve, and only the right escalations reach leadership.
We design tiered governance, anchored by KPI architecture and visual management. Gemba walks bring leaders to where the work actually happens.
Cost and quality improvement only matters if it shows up in the P&L. A wishlist of Kaizen ideas is not a CIP. A managed pipeline with owners, savings tracked monthly and reconciled with finance, that is a CIP.
We frame the annual programme, prioritise the work using impact × effort, run Kaizen events where they belong, and embed root-cause discipline so that fixes stay fixed.
Not buzzwords. The Lean, Six Sigma, and Quality Systems toolkit applied in regulated manufacturing, pulled into each mandate as the situation requires.
We do not arrive with a method looking for a problem. We start with your problem and reach for the right tool.
No long proposal cycles, no surprise scope. Four steps from first conversation to clean handover.
A 30-minute call. You describe the problem. We tell you honestly whether OEx is the right fit, and what a sensible next step looks like.
A focused scoping engagement. As long as the rigour requires, never less. We agree exactly what we are solving, how we will measure done, and who owns what.
We work alongside your team, on the floor, in the meetings, on the KPIs. Weekly cadence with you. No PDFs flying back and forth in place of progress.
Transferable capability lives inside your team. Frameworks, cadence, owners, documentation. We are designed to leave you running it without us.
We do not promise specific percentages. Anyone who does is either lucky, lying, or both. We promise the approach, the standard, and the rigour.
No juniors, no account managers, no work handed off downward after the contract is signed. The people who scope the work deliver the work. You always know who is accountable.
GMP, FSSC 22000, HACCP, ISO 9001. These are not acronyms we learned for the proposal. They are the environments we have spent the past decade running inside.
In regulated manufacturing, quality is not a phase that comes after the build. It is the build. We work to a standard that holds up to your auditor, your customer, and the most demanding reviewer on your team. Including the one in the mirror.
We engage with a small number of clients at a time. Depth over volume. We say no to mandates we cannot deliver well.
OEx Advisory is a Netherlands-based boutique practice serving food, biotech and pharmaceutical manufacturers across NL and EMEA, where the cost of doing operations badly is measured in deviations, recalls and lost shifts.
We work with a small number of clients at a time. Depth is the product.
We say no to mandates we cannot deliver well. Honest scoping is part of how we earn trust.
The same hands that scope the brief deliver the brief. No handoff to people you have never met.
Every engagement is designed to end with capability inside your team. Not a dependency on us.
Interim CEO
Over two decades of multilingual country-manager and CEO experience inside international industrial groups, with P&L responsibility up to 45M €, teams up to 650 people, and a track record of EBITDA turnarounds.
Builds KPI-led cultures across borders and languages, working fluently in English, French, Czech, Polish and Russian.
Interim Manager
Over a decade of Operational Excellence leadership in GMP-regulated manufacturing, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.
Embeds Safety- and Quality-first cultures through Lean leadership, Capability Building, Cadence and CIP.
Business Development Representative
Usually the first person you'll speak to at OEx.
She listens to what you're up against, asks the right questions, and connects you with the partner who can actually help.
Thirty minutes. No slides. Tell us the operational problem in front of you. We will tell you honestly whether OEx is the right fit, and what a sensible next step would look like.
Food & beverage · Biotechnology · Pharmaceutical manufacturing · GMP scale-up · FSSC 22000 / HACCP