James Penz

Track record · blinded by scale and sector

Money booked. Prizes sized. Capabilities that outlived me.

Three kinds of proof, in descending order of certainty. Client names are confidential; every figure is sourced from my own work product, and realized is always distinguished from sized. Ask me about any of them.

Exhibit 1Value identified and delivered, six deep-dive engagements

Realized figures are booked results. Sized figures are validated, sequenced prizes with an owner and a path.

Materials management recovery$4B industrial manufacturer

$210M

Enterprise automation ambitionglobal technology OEM

$150-200M

Embedded operations turnaroundindustrial manufacturerrealized

$20M

Supply-chain reinvention, in-year marginOTC consumer healthrealized

~$10M

Automation opportunity wave onetop-5 U.S. health insurer

$11-14M

Source: engagement work product. Bars scaled to the $210M prize. Client names withheld.

I · Realized, money booked

$20M

Realized savings · embedded operations turnaround

Industrial manufacturer

The situation.
A manufacturer's cost structure had drifted and plant performance was eroding faster than the monthly reporting showed. Leadership needed the losses found and closed, not studied.
What I did.
Deployed as half of a two-person embedded team, plant-floor diagnostics, a rebuilt operating cadence, weekly working sessions with the CEO.
The result.
$20M in realized savings; the CEO retained the team six months to run weekly diagnostics, train the operating team, and embed the cadence permanently.

Plant-floor loss diagnostics · Weekly CEO operating cadence · Six-month embedded extension

~$10M

Margin delivered in-year · supply-chain reinvention

Leading OTC consumer-health manufacturer

The situation.
Nearly 2,000 SKUs across two categories, statistical forecast error near 47%, and packaging lines running at roughly half their usable capacity.
What I did.
Owned the analytics through three consecutive monthly executive reviews with client leadership: the margin-per-labor-hour scheduling model, a rebuilt statistical forecast, a 4,056-respondent conjoint study to quantify which SKUs consumers would actually miss, and the complexity-to-efficiency regression that priced what each incremental SKU cost the lines.
The result.
~$10M of margin delivered in-year (realized); forecast error cut to 39%; simplification recommendations worth $29–70M in gross profit and a ~$40M working-capital path, handed over with the playbook.

Conjoint survey, N=4,056 · Margin-per-labor-hour scheduling model · EOQ sprint worth ~$3M · SKU-complexity regression

II · Sized and sequenced, the prize defined, the path built

$210M

Gross-margin prize sized · materials management

$4B industrial-equipment manufacturer

The situation.
Post-COVID materials chaos: ~130,000 production hours lost to shortages, one in ten supplier orders on time, $45M of open order exceptions, inventory up 2.5x in two years.
What I did.
Led the materials-management recovery end to end, analytic safety-stock targets buffering up to 70% of shortages, an exception playbook with escalation gates, and the design of a central materials organization with a dedicated recovery team.
The result.
Up to $210M in gross margin (~60% throughput recovery), $90M actionable in year one, 35–45% working-capital reduction path, validated by nineteen client operators across five plants before handover.

Analytic safety-stock targets, $36M · 5,200+ exception orders triaged · Top-10 suppliers drove ~70% of pushouts · 29,000+ SKUs modeled

$150–200M

Automation ambition sized · five C-suite programs

Global technology OEM

The situation.
Years of automation activity had produced less than $1M in savings, effort without an operating thesis.
What I did.
Sized the enterprise ambition across HR, finance, sales, and order-to-cash; wrote five opportunity charters; secured a named executive sponsor for each, including the CFO; sequenced a self-funding first wave.
The result.
A board-level program with a $150–200M two-year target against ~$400M full potential, built to pay for itself from the $40–55M first wave.

Five C-suite opportunity charters · CFO-sponsored first wave, $40-55M · Full potential sized at ~$400M

III · Capability built, runs without me

75%

Cycle-time cut · the automation operating model still in use

Top-5 U.S. health insurer · three engagements

The situation.
Automation demand had outrun governance, no common intake, no scoring, no way to tell a good opportunity from a loud one.
What I did.
Authored the operating model their automation office runs on: an eight-stage intake-to-value lifecycle, decision-rights gates, three-level opportunity scoring, ~30 standardized artifacts with named client owners.
The result.
One workshop wave surfaced 27+ opportunities worth $11–14M net benefit against $0.6M investment; across three engagements, process cycle time fell 75%.

Eight-stage intake-to-value lifecycle · Three-level opportunity scoring · ~30 artifacts with named owners · RAPID decision rights

8 CFOs

Portfolio finance playbook · deployed

Multi-billion-dollar investment fund

The situation.
The fund wanted finance-function value creation it could repeat across portfolio companies rather than reinvent per deal.
What I did.
Designed the six-resource playbook suite: strategy field guide, balanced scorecard with quartile benchmarks, maturity checklists, process playbooks to the third level of detail, org-and-talent model, systems-and-data roadmap.
The result.
Deployed with eight portfolio-company CFOs, targets like total cost of finance from 1.0% to 0.7% of revenue and a sub-7-day close. A repeatable asset, not a report.

Quartile benchmark scorecard · Process playbooks to level three · Chart-of-accounts redesign · Three CFO archetypes

Exhibit 2What delivery looks like in the operating metrics

Movement on the metrics that produce the dollars, from the same engagements.

Statistical forecast errorOTC consumer health, rebuilt forecastrealized

47% to 39%

Process cycle timetop-5 U.S. health insurer, three engagementsrealized

-75%

Production throughput recovery path$4B industrial manufacturer

~60%

Shortage exposure buffered by new safety-stock targets$4B industrial manufacturer

up to 70%

Source: engagement work product. Bars show the percentage move on each metric.

Deal diligence, my own capital

I don't just advise on diligence. I underwrite.

At Paradosi Partners I've underwritten 1,000+ acquisition targets with family-office capital behind me. CIM analysis, IC-grade three-statement LBO models (I built the modeling engine), direct negotiations with owners. Combined with the Bain casework above, that's commercial due diligence from both chairs: advisor and principal.

The complete record

All nineteen, one line each.

2022–23$4B agricultural & industrial-equipment manufacturerMaterials management & integrated business planning · deep-dive above
2022Leading OTC consumer-health manufacturerSupply-chain reinvention, portfolio & planning · deep-dive above
2022Multi-billion-dollar investment fundFinance-excellence playbook, deployed with 8 portfolio CFOs · deep-dive above
2021Global commercial-aerospace OEMTransformation delivery office for one of the decade's largest aerospace turnarounds, initiative pipeline, stage-gate governance, value-capture reporting
2021Fortune-50 aviation manufacturerAviation transformation planning, cost baseline, initiative sizing, program architecture
2021Enterprise-technology OEMSupply-chain automation, opportunity map and sequenced roadmap across plan, source, make, deliver
2021International healthcare providerPhase-II transformation, support-functions operating model: spans and layers, shared services
2021Building-products distributorFull-potential review, growth thesis and operational levers, built as a board-level agenda
2020–21Top-5 U.S. health insurer · three engagementsAutomation capability, acceleration, end-to-end redesign, marketing automation · deep-dive above
2020National office-products retailerZero-based cost transformation, owned the cost baseline and category workplans across ten months in the pandemic's hardest retail year
2020Global technology OEMAutomation full potential, five C-suite charters · deep-dive above
2020Regional health payerCost-transformation diagnostic, baseline, opportunity scan, program design
2019–20Specialty P&C insurerRPA delivery, process selection, business cases, first automations into production
2019B2B business-services providerCost transformation, diagnostic through execution across two consecutive phases; the client extended the work
2020Impact-investing nonprofitPro bono strategy. Bain Extra10 program

The insurer's three cases and the services provider's two phases are consolidated rows. 15 lines, 19 engagements.

So how would this start at your company?

First 90 days