Niyamis' 4-week deployment methodology

Why four weeks is the right frame

Most software-vendor deployments promise "up and running in a week." Most management-consulting engagements are priced in quarters. Neither shape fits a precision shop.

A week isn't long enough to know whether the product fits your floor. Quarterly engagements are long enough to stop being accountable to a single operator's experience — which is exactly the accountability a tool crib needs.

Four weeks is the shape Niyamis settled on after seven deployments. Long enough to measure a real baseline, short enough that the shop's CAM engineer and toolroom supervisor remember the "before" clearly when reviewing the "after."

Week 1 — Diagnose, day one

Monday

Two Niyamis people on your floor by 7am. Not to run a kickoff meeting — to stand at the crib while the opening shift comes on and watch how tools actually move. We take notes. We don't touch anything.

By 10am we've walked the shop with your supervisor. We've seen the machines, met the operators, and asked three questions about every machine: what parts run on this, which tools break most, what would you have bought last month if the budget had allowed?

Tuesday–Thursday

We sit with your supervisor for one session (usually 90 minutes) and your CAM engineer for another. We export your last 18 months of PO history and your crib transaction log. We do not yet import them anywhere — we read them ourselves first, quietly, off-floor, and build a baseline measurement.

Friday

A two-hour session with the plant manager and (if they're a separate person) the owner. We walk through:

• What we saw on Monday that surprised us.
• The three highest-leverage opportunities we can see in the 18-month history.
• An estimate of the addressable dollar savings, rounded to a range.
• A proposed deployment scope for weeks 2–4.

At the end of Friday, you decide whether to continue. If the answer is no, we leave you with the baseline scorecard and an invoice for the Diagnose week. No strings. About one in four Diagnose engagements doesn't continue, and that's the point.

Week 2 — Deploy the crib

Monday

A Niyamis consultant arrives with TMS's tenant already provisioned for your shop. We spend the morning with your IT lead confirming network, printer, and barcode-scanner integration. Afternoon: the first import runs.

Tuesday–Wednesday

Historical transaction data imports. Brand records get reconciled with your assembly IDs. By end-of-Wednesday, the crib UI shows a correct current-stock view — minimums, maximums, reorder points all loaded from your current values (we don't tune them yet).

Thursday

Train the toolroom. Two hours with the supervisor, one hour each with the clerks. Hands-on, not slideware. Every tool that gets picked up in the afternoon is a TAKE that lands in TMS.

Friday

The supervisor runs the crib from TMS for a full day. We watch. We fix what doesn't work. Most small issues surface on this Friday.

Week 3 — Deploy the terminal

Monday

The terminal goes live on the shop floor. We set up the hardware (a Workshop-light tablet or kiosk PC, whichever the shop prefers), install RFID readers if your shop uses them, and walk each operator through TAKE, RETURN, SCRAP, REFILL in turn.

Tuesday–Thursday

The terminal is running; operators are using it. We stay nearby. Every time an operator looks confused or taps the wrong button, we fix something — either in their mental model or in the UI.

Friday

Scorecards start populating. The first week of live transaction data has landed. We pull the Brand Scorecard for the top five SKUs by spend and share it with your CAM engineer over coffee. This is usually the moment the team realises what TMS is for. Schedules shift.

Week 4 — Measure

Monday

The first full Measure-phase weekly cadence review. Supervisor, CAM engineer, plant manager, Niyamis consultant, forty-five minutes. We review:

• Alerts triggered in the past week and how they were resolved.
• Brand Scorecard deltas since deployment start.
• Life-predictor confidence on the top-20-by-volume SKUs.
• One PO decision the supervisor is weighing, and what the scorecard says about it.

Tuesday–Thursday

Operational mode. The consultant is on floor two days but lighter touch — more time in the office reading data, less time standing at the crib. By week 4 the toolroom runs itself; we're just making sure the habits hold.

Friday

End-of-engagement review. Present:

• Baseline-vs-week-4 scorecard.
• The top three decisions the shop has already made from TMS data.
• The forward plan for months 2–6 (Measure phase) and beyond (Improve phase).

What the shop owns at the end of week 4

• A live Niyamis TMS instance with four weeks of live transaction data.
• A trained toolroom supervisor who runs the crib from TMS by habit.
• A reference baseline for scrap rate, tool spend, and stockout frequency — so every future month can be compared against a real number, not an opinion.
• A named Niyamis consultant whose number you already have.

What Niyamis owns at the end of week 4

• The scorecard that showed us which brand wins on which alloy on your floor.
• A running account of which operational improvements stuck and which didn't.
• Homework for months 2–6 — usually two or three analytics extensions specific to your shop.

What a week 5 looks like

A Friday-afternoon Teams call. Forty-five minutes. Every week for the next six months. We stay in the room. Improvements compound.

Want to map this to your shop?

Book a thirty-minute discovery call. If the four-week shape fits what you need, we'll scope the Diagnose week.

— Philippe, Niyamis