It's not for lack of options. McKinsey, BCG, Bain on one side. Worley, Hatch on the other. The Big 4 in between. System integrators like TCS and Accenture covering the technology dimension.
Yet none of these players solves the central problem of industrial operations: implementing operational strategy with proprietary technology, at a fraction of the cost and time.
The Left Side: Strategy Without Execution
McKinsey, BCG, and Bain charge $500,000 to $2 million per month. Typical engagement: 9 to 12 months. The final deliverable: strategic recommendations in a beautifully designed PowerPoint.
When they leave, they take all the generated knowledge. The billable hours model incentivizes slowness, not results.
According to IPA, capital projects in extractive industries report average overruns of 30-50%, partly because strategic recommendations rarely reach operational implementation effectively.
Strategy without execution isn't strategy. It's documentation.
The Right Side: Execution Without Operational Strategy
Worley, Hatch, Ausenco, Fluor — the great EPCM firms deliver megaprojects worth billions in extreme conditions. When Worley builds a processing plant, the plant works.
The problem is what happens after they hand over the keys.
The AMCouncil of Australia has systematically documented it: EPCM firms deliver plants, not operations. Maintenance strategies, critical spares, operational documentation, and trained personnel are frequently not in place at handover.
This explains why 70% of new mines and industrial megaprojects suffer significant ramp-up delays (McKinsey). Not because engineering failed. Because nobody prepared the operation.
The Blind Spot: Technology Without Operations
The Big 4, TCS, Accenture — they implement technology. But implementing technology isn't understanding operations.
Mining Global reports that 60-70% of digital transformation projects in mining don't scale beyond the pilot. The reason isn't technology. It's that technology was implemented without understanding the operations it was meant to transform.
The IAM documents that most industrial organizations stall at Level 2 of asset management maturity. Not for lack of technology. For lack of operational strategy guiding how to use that technology.
The Gap in the Center
McKinsey tells you that you need a world-class OR strategy. Right. But doesn't implement it.
Worley builds the plant where that strategy should execute. But their mandate ends at handover.
TCS deploys the SAP system that should support the strategy. But doesn't have operational context to configure it correctly.
The gap in the center: nobody implements the operational strategy. Nobody takes McKinsey's recommendations, understands what Worley delivered, and works within TCS's system to prepare the organization — its people, processes, contracts, documentation — to operate from Day 1 at maximum capacity.
A $1 billion megaproject with six months of ramp-up delay loses $50-$100 million in deferred production. A poorly implemented maintenance strategy can lead to reactive costs 3 to 10 times the proactive equivalent.
A Different Model: Results in 90-120 Days
At ValueStrategy Consulting we built the firm the industry needed.
We're not career consultants. We're operators who built the tools we wished we'd had.
In Operational Readiness: 90-120 days, covering 13 functional areas. In Asset Management Strategy: 63 hours instead of 500, with 91/100 quality across 7 auditable dimensions. Direct financial impact: $160,000 to $213,000 savings per project.
When we finish, knowledge doesn't leave with us. It stays codified in the client's organization.
This model is possible because we combine real operational experience with proprietary in-house agentic tools and software. The same tools we use to deliver our services are what we can deploy within client organizations as permanent installed capacity.
That's what it means to be the bridge between the strategy McKinsey recommends and the execution Worley builds.
Schedule a meeting with the VSC team. If you're preparing a ramp-up, reviewing your maintenance strategy, or evaluating how to accelerate an operational transformation, let's talk. Thirty minutes to understand your specific case.
The industry generating 40% of global GDP deserves more than PowerPoints and systems nobody uses. It deserves implementation.
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