Manufacturing and supply chain businesses operate in a world of thin margins, complex cost structures, and constant exposure to external shocks — tariffs, material cost volatility, logistics disruptions, and labor market shifts. Without CFO-level oversight of your cost accounting, inventory management, and capital allocation, you’re making million-dollar decisions with thousand-dollar data.
At DMW Advisory, we bring Wall Street-caliber financial leadership — powered by AI tools that let us operate at the speed and depth of a full finance team — to fractional CFO manufacturing supply chain companies doing $5M to $50M in revenue.
Growing companies in this space face a unique set of financial complexities that most bookkeepers aren’t equipped to handle — and that don’t yet justify a $250K+ full-time CFO:
We bring financial discipline and strategic insight to manufacturing and supply chain operations:
We’ve helped companies across the fractional CFO manufacturing supply chain landscape gain financial clarity, optimize cash flow, and scale with confidence. Here are a few examples:
Manufacturing · Contract Manufacturing · $22M Revenue
The Challenge: A contract manufacturer with $22M in revenue and 6 production lines was experiencing declining margins despite stable pricing and growing volume. The owner suspected overhead allocation issues but couldn’t pinpoint the problem — their accounting system treated all production overhead as a single pool, obscuring true product-line profitability.
Our Approach: We implemented activity-based costing across all production lines, separating direct labor, materials, machine time, quality costs, and overhead by product family. This revealed that two product lines were significantly underpriced and one legacy line was consuming disproportionate machine time.
The Results: The owner could finally see where money was being made — and lost:
Manufacturing · Food Production · $14M Revenue
The Challenge: A specialty food manufacturer importing 60% of raw ingredients faced uncertainty from proposed tariff increases. Without financial modeling, the leadership team was paralyzed — unable to quantify the impact or evaluate alternatives like domestic sourcing, reformulation, or price increases.
Our Approach: We built a comprehensive tariff impact model showing margin effects at various tariff levels (10%, 25%, 50%) across all product lines. We modeled three scenarios: full price pass-through, partial domestic sourcing, and product reformulation. We also analyzed the cash flow impact of pre-buying inventory ahead of tariff implementation.
The Results: The company made data-driven decisions instead of guessing:
Manufacturing · Precision Machining · $18M Revenue
The Challenge: A precision machining company wanted to invest $3M in CNC automation to reduce labor dependency and increase capacity, but the CFO seat was vacant and the owner had no financial model to justify the investment to lenders or evaluate the ROI.
Our Approach: We built a detailed CapEx ROI model comparing current labor costs to automated production, including installation downtime, training costs, maintenance contracts, and financing scenarios. We modeled SBA loan, equipment lease, and cash purchase options, and prepared a lender presentation package.
The Results: The automation investment was approved with a clear path to payback:
If your manufacturing operation needs financial leadership to optimize costs, navigate trade uncertainty, or fund growth investments — we have the expertise to help.
Or contact us at genevieve@dmwadvisory.com
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