Customer Success Stories / Bankruptcy to Profitable
CASE STUDY · $32M MANUFACTURING SME, POST-BANKRUPTCY
Bankruptcy to Profitable
The plant was purchased out of bankruptcy after years of poor management, with a healthy order book it couldn’t deliver on — and a new owner who needed immediate proof of a turnaround while preparing for higher-volume growth. Every price was still built on the assumptions that caused the bankruptcy in the first place.
90 days
To cash-flow positive
9 months
To above industry average EBITDA
96%
Fewer late deliveries, in 2 months
The Situation
The orders were real. The prices weren’t.
Years of poor management had already driven the company into bankruptcy by the time a new owner took over — inheriting a healthy order book it couldn’t deliver on. Customers were leaving over poor on-time delivery and quality, the company was losing more quotes than it won, and there was little visibility into product or customer costs and margins. Some quotes weren’t profitable from the day they were signed.
Production was misaligned with demand — large finished-goods and work-in-process inventories sitting alongside orders still going out late — and every price was still built on the cost assumptions that had caused the bankruptcy. The new owner needed to show results immediately, while also preparing the organization to take on more, higher-volume work.
Before Vayoom
Negative EBITDA, after years of poor management
>$1M in shipments late by over 60 days
2 customer launches failed, $4K in daily scrap
what was in the way
Prices built on outdated assumptions, little visibility into true margins
No processes or systems to catch a mispriced quote before it went out
A new owner needing fast, visible proof of a turnaround
Root Cause
Poor cost absorption on low-volume products
Quality Finding
Plant-wide averages were hiding product-specific problems
Cost Finding
Indirect labor and SG&A both high vs. industry
New Owner’s Mandate
Immediate gains, plus readiness for higher-volume growth
The Diagnosis
What the averages were hiding
True Product Cost™ (TPC) analysis found that prices were misaligned to the real cost structure — years of decisions on low-volume products had never properly absorbed their share of cost, so some of the busiest-looking work was quietly losing money on every order.
The same blind spot showed up in quality. Looking at defect and scrap rates on average across the plant hid exactly which products needed attention — a handful of them needed focused quality work to become profitable at all, and averaging across everything else buried that signal. The same TPC analysis found indirect labor and SG&A running high against both revenue and industry benchmarks, and identified the scheduling gaps for critical customers that were driving overtime, expedited shipping, and outsourcing costs nobody had tied back to specific accounts.
The Approach
Six steps, in this order
Pricing had to be rebuilt from the true cost of production up — then protected by systems that would catch the next mispriced quote before it went out the door.
01
Build the True Product Cost
Applied Vayoom’s True Product Cost™ (TPC) analysis to develop individual, accurate P&Ls and prices for every product.
02
Renegotiate and drop what didn’t work
Renegotiated prices against the corrected cost, and dropped unprofitable products entirely unless a higher price could be achieved.
03
Schedule to demand
Implemented demand-based capacity analysis and scheduling for critical customers, cutting the overtime, expedited shipping, and outsourcing costs that scheduling gaps had been driving.
04
Track quality where it mattered, not on average
Focused defect and scrap tracking on the specific products the TPC analysis flagged, instead of relying on plant-wide averages that had been hiding where the real problem was.
05
Quote from the current cost, automatically
Deployed quote generation built on the latest TPC data, so every new quote reflected current, accurate cost.
06
Build the operating system
Implemented visual management and production-recipe and quality-management systems, shifting the plant to a process- and data-driven culture rather than one-off fixes.
“We needed to prove this could work fast, and then prove it wasn’t a fluke. Ninety days to cash flow positive got us the first. Nine months of results above industry average is what got us the second — and it’s a different plant now, running on data instead of habit.”
— New Owner
The Results
What changed on the floor — and on the P&L
Cash flow turned positive in 90 days. Backlog shrank more than 80% within three months, and within nine months the plant was running above industry-average EBITDA — on the same assets, under the same roof, priced against what things actually cost to make.
90 days
To cash-flow positive
9 months
To above industry-average EBITDA
80%+
Backlog reduction, in 3 months
96%
Fewer late deliveries, in 2 months
$92K
Late shipments, down from $1M
11
New products launched for 4 customers
→
Demand-driven scheduling and product-specific quality management
✓
Visual management and production-recipe systems now in place
AUTOMOTIVE · SAFETY-CRITICAL PARTS
Met Demand at Lower Cost
$2.5M in operating cost savings plus a 39% increase in net income
AUTOMOTIVE · DRIVETRAIN AXLES
Increased Flow & Flexibility
$752K in net operating cost savings, plus a 1,139% return across the project
AUTOMOTIVE · DRIVETRAIN COMPONENTS
Realign Flow for Growth
$1.6M+ in combined labor and opportunity-cost savings, ~$3M in near-term CapEx avoided
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