When the plant has outgrown a closet and a spreadsheet
A fractional CTO for manufacturers who need to know which systems carry production, which are a liability, and which purchase can wait.
The person who knows the machines is not your technology plan
The plant has someone who can keep a line moving. The office has accounting software, maybe an ERP someone half-implemented, and a server that shares a wall with the dust. Quoting lives in a spreadsheet with a hopeful name. The label printer is a single point of failure nobody has written down.
When a vendor shows up, they are selling to a busy owner. There is no one whose job is to ask whether the new system replaces the spreadsheet or just sits beside it.
A fractional CTO does not program the equipment on the floor. The job is to make sure the business knows which technology is carrying revenue, which is a liability, and which purchase is about to be made because the week was bad.
What the Operating Brief looks at
- What is office technology, and what stops production if it dies
- How many servers you have, how old they are, who can log in, and when a restore was last tested
- Whether the computers on the floor share a network with email
- The system of record for orders, inventory, and shipping — and the side files that are the real system
- Who outside the company can reach the network: the machine technician, the software consultant, the camera installer
- What not to replace this year
A useful outcome
You should finish the brief knowing what to leave in place, what needs an owner, and whether the next contract is a decision or a drift. If the answer is “keep the ERP and fix the way orders get into it,” that is a successful assessment.