ABOUT SHARPEN
Sharpen was built by manufacturing operations leaders with 20 years of hands-on experience running plants from 10-person job shops to $500M OEMs.
WHY WE BUILT THIS
Shipments going out late and you do not know why until it is too late
Scrap that keeps coming back no matter how many times you fix it
Good people walking out the door faster than you can train new ones
No idea which jobs are actually making money until the month closes
Supervisors firefighting all day instead of managing to a plan
A nagging feeling that something is wrong but no way to pinpoint it
These are not bad luck. They are symptoms of specific gaps in the operating system. Every one is fixable with the right sequence of actions. Sharpen tells you exactly what that sequence is.
BACKGROUND
The team behind Sharpen has led operational turnarounds, built operating systems from scratch, and delivered hundreds of millions in EBITDA improvement across dozens of manufacturing businesses. Background includes senior leadership roles at Fortune 500 manufacturers and portfolio operations leadership at middle-market private equity firms.
What we kept seeing was the same pattern: small and mid-size plants struggling with problems that have known solutions, but without a practical way to access them. The operating system rigor that Fortune 500 manufacturers take for granted, with dedicated continuous improvement teams and decades-old playbooks, was simply not available to most of the sector.
Sharpen is how we fix that. Not a simplified version. Not a watered-down checklist. The real framework, made practical for the way small and mid-size manufacturers actually operate.
20+
years manufacturing operations leadership
10-2,000
employee plants directly led
Fortune 500
experience inside the operating systems that shaped the industry
$100M+
documented EBITDA improvement delivered
PE portfolio
operations leadership across 8-10 companies
10 pillars
operating system built from real plant work
OUR MISSION
The tools that Fortune 500 manufacturers use to run world-class operations have never been accessible to the small and mid-size plants that need them most. Sharpen changes that.
OUR VISION
250,000 manufacturing plants in the United States. Most of them leaving significant profit on the floor every single day. Sharpen intends to solve it at scale.
FOR PE OPERATING PARTNERS
Running this across multiple portcos?
One framework, consistent scoring, side-by-side benchmarking across the portfolio. Built for the operating-partner relationship.
The free 10-minute diagnostic scores your plant across all 10 pillars and identifies your ceiling constraints.
BUILD MY ROADMAP - FREE