WORK
Illustrative engagements across Quebec
Composite narratives drawn from mid-market manufacturing and industrial clients. Names and figures are adjusted to protect confidentiality. Outcomes describe advisory deliverables — not guaranteed production results.
Phase-gate review — Laval precision machining
When three demos outran the strategy
A fourth-generation precision parts manufacturer near Laval had scheduled cobot demonstrations with three integrators before internal teams agreed which cell hurt most. Scrap on a secondary deburr station was rising, but the bottleneck was actually upstream fixturing — a fact buried under vendor enthusiasm for vision-guided picking.
RoboNarrative ran a four-week assessment across two shifts, rebuilt the business case with conservative throughput assumptions, and delivered an eighteen-month roadmap with two phases: fixture stabilisation first, then a scoped cobot deburr cell. Vendor selection moved to phase two with weighted criteria tied to existing Fanuc infrastructure. Leadership cancelled one demo week — saving roughly six weeks of management distraction — and redirected budget toward tooling the roadmap prioritised.
Advisory scope: Feasibility, roadmap, vendor scorecard template · Duration: 11 weeks
Facility walkthrough — Saint-Eustache equipment plant
Twelve ideas, one capex window
A stainless food-equipment builder in Saint-Eustache maintained a long list of automation wishes — weld cells, AMR kitting, palletising, vision QC — but a single capex envelope for the next fiscal year. Competing department heads each had a preferred integrator and a slide deck.
We facilitated a two-day workshop at their plant, scored processes against a consistent matrix (labour pain, quality risk, change complexity, safety exposure), and collapsed twelve concepts into a four-phase roadmap. Phase one targeted manual weld takt inconsistency; phase four reserved AMR exploration until WMS data quality improved. The board received a narrative memo and financial appendix in French and English. Parallel pilot spending stopped; procurement issued one RFP aligned to phase one requirements.
Advisory scope: Roadmap, facilitated workshop, bilingual board pack · Duration: 8 weeks
Workforce session — Longueuil fabrication shop
Union consultation before the robot arrived
A Longueuil metal fabrication shop had board approval for a cobot tending press-brake adjacent cells, but shop-floor trust was thin after a prior automation project left maintenance carrying undocumented PLC changes. The local union requested structured consultation before any vendor contract.
RoboNarrative designed a change programme parallel to technical selection: role-change matrices, supervisor talking points, and three facilitated sessions with operators, stewards, and maintenance leads. We scored three integrator bids against requirements the workforce helped define — including spare-parts response time and bilingual training materials. Safety review support produced a risk register aligned to ISO/TS 15066 expectations without claiming certification. The client signed an integrator eight weeks later with no grievance filing related to the automation announcement — an outcome we document as process success, not a promise replicable everywhere.
Advisory scope: Change enablement, vendor selection, safety risk register · Duration: 14 weeks
Multi-site roadmap — Eastern Townships plastics group
Two plants, one narrative for private equity
A plastics processor with sites in Granby and Drummondville faced a private-equity diligence request: document automation strategy, capital sequencing, and labour impact across both facilities. Internal teams had conflicting PowerPoints and no shared assumptions about OEE baselines.
We harmonised metrics definitions, ran paired feasibility sprints at each plant, and produced a twenty-four-month group roadmap with explicit dependencies — Granby mould-change automation could not start until Drummondville material-handling data met agreed quality thresholds. Analytics specifications defined the monthly dashboard PE reviewers would see. Retainer advisory continued for two quarters to chair roadmap governance calls.
Advisory scope: Dual-site feasibility, group roadmap, KPI framework, retainer governance · Duration: 6 months initial + retainer
Quarterly governance — Montreal HQ review
Recovering a stalled AMR pilot
A Montreal industrial distributor deployed AMRs in a warehouse pilot that never reached production cadence — routing conflicts with pick zones, unclear safety ownership, and leadership lacking a single reporting view. Integrator and internal IT each blamed the other.
We were engaged not to re-integrate hardware but to diagnose strategy failure: misaligned phase goals, absent change management, and KPIs that measured robot uptime instead of order-cycle impact. A six-week recovery roadmap redefined pilot success criteria, reassigned safety documentation duties, and paused fleet expansion until baseline metrics stabilized. Operations analytics retainer delivered quarterly narrative reports for the COO. The client eventually expanded the fleet — on a slower timeline than originally marketed to them by the OEM.
Advisory scope: Recovery assessment, revised roadmap, analytics retainer · Duration: 9 weeks + ongoing reporting
These narratives are illustrative composites for marketing purposes. They do not constitute client endorsements, guaranteed outcomes, or references available upon request unless separately agreed. Production, safety, and financial results depend on client execution and conditions outside advisory scope.
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