operational-excellence
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The Publisher Who Turned a Rolodex Into a Consulting Firm
After 250-plus publications and a decade of community events, Scott Costello made an intriguing wager: the real product was never the magazine. It was the ability to turn relationships, strategy and follow-through into institutional momentum.
Cordance Is Collecting the Software Nobody Notices - Until It Stops Working
The Raleigh software group is assembling a portfolio of niche B2B tools for warehouses, campuses, laboratories and thrift stores - then betting that patient ownership and shared operating muscle can make small specialists stronger.
The Private Equity Firm That Would Rather Walk the Shop Floor
LFM Capital built a $1 billion-plus investing platform around an unfashionable conviction: the best way to understand a factory is to have run one. Its engineers-turned-investors bring capital, operating muscle and a respect for the companies they buy.
Cardone Ventures Wants to Make the Owner the Least Essential Person in the Room
The 10X brand supplies the volume. Cardone Ventures supplies the operating system - a four-part method designed to help established business owners build companies that can grow without depending on them for every decision.
Lock 8 Partners Is Building the Software Buyout Firm for Workhorses, Not Unicorns
The New York firm buys overlooked B2B software businesses, installs operating muscle and stays focused on the unglamorous work of making a good product into a durable company.
Auk Industries
A Singapore startup wants to be the 'Fitbit for machines' - snapping cheap sensors onto any factory line and turning decades-old equipment into a live data feed in days, not months.
Timah Partners
Timah Partners is a Singapore-based permanent holding company that acquires essential, recurring B2B SMEs across Southeast Asia and holds them for the long term, with no intent to flip. Founded by Dennis Chua, it pairs patient capital with a CEO Succession (CEO-in-Training) program that develops the next generation of operators to run its portfolio companies. The firm positions itself as a permanent home for owners who lack a succession plan, prioritizing culture, founder legacy, and operational stewardship over quick exits. It closed a US$50 million Series A in June 2025.
DeepHow
DeepHow is a Detroit-based enterprise AI company that turns the hands-on know-how of experienced industrial workers into structured, searchable training. Founded in 2018 by former Siemens innovation leaders, its platform uses vision AI and machine learning to capture expert workflows on video, automatically segment and transcribe them into step-by-step guides, and - in its newer 'physical AI' products - verify that frontline operators are performing tasks correctly in real time. Used by manufacturers, pharma companies and field-service organizations to close skills gaps as veteran workers retire.
EthonAI
EthonAI (now branded Ethon) is a Zurich-based industrial AI company, spun out of ETH Zurich in 2021, that builds a Manufacturing Analytics System for factories. Its no-code platform layers on top of existing factory data sources to detect visual defects, monitor processes and run autonomous root cause analysis, using causal AI to explain what drives production variation. Customers including Siemens, Lindt & Sprüngli, Bosch and Roche use it to cut quality losses by up to 50% and raise productivity while keeping engineers in the decision loop.
iObeya
iObeya is a French enterprise SaaS company that digitizes the Obeya - the Lean 'big room' where teams manage strategy and operations visually. Its Digital Obeya Platform recreates the paper-on-the-wall experience of physical war rooms as connected virtual boards, letting multisite and hybrid teams run Lean rituals, Agile ceremonies, KPI reviews and problem-solving in real time. Founded in 2011 out of work with PSA (now Stellantis), iObeya is used by large industrial and regulated organizations such as Airbus, Thales, Sanofi and Schneider Electric to align leadership and frontline teams and accelerate decision-making.
Ideagen EHS
Ideagen EHS is the environmental, health and safety arm of Ideagen, a UK-headquartered governance, risk and compliance software company. Built on technology that includes the acquired DevonWay platform, Ideagen EHS gives manufacturers, energy and nuclear operators, aviation, maritime and government organisations one place to run incident reporting, risk assessment, audits and inspections, environmental compliance, occupational health and industrial hygiene. It layers AI over that data to draft investigations, map regulations and surface risk, aiming to move regulated, high-consequence workplaces from disconnected spreadsheets to continuous, audit-ready compliance.
Rever, Inc
Rever is a San Francisco-based SaaS company building a Frontline Intelligence Platform that digitizes kaizen, audits, inspections and continuous improvement for industrial operators - turning everyday workers into a connected army of problem-solvers, with AI that surfaces hidden losses and replicates proven fixes across plants.