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WerkbankBeratung

Fixed-price consulting for manufacturers · Neuwied

No day rates.No surprises.

We advise owner-run metal, plastics and finishing shops between 5 and 60 people. Every piece of work we do has a price and a delivery date before it starts — written on a card, on the wall, in public.

You will not find a rate card on this site. There isn't one.

Book the half-day intro — €0See the price wall
A shop owner and a consultant leaning over a paper production plan on a steel workbench in a small metal fabrication workshop
packages, all fixed
5
€ for the first half day
0
travel included around Neuwied
80 km

The price wall

Five cards. Five prices. Five delivery dates.

This is the whole commercial offer of this firm. There is nothing behind it, no scoping call to discover the real number, no line item that appears later. Pick a card, and that is what it costs and that is when you get it.

Process check

01

Fixed price

€1,200

1 day on your shop floor

You get it by

3 working days

Report in your hands 3 working days after the visit

We walk one product family from order entry to loading bay and write down where the time actually goes.

What's on the card

  • One full day on site, both consultants
  • Timed observation of one product family end to end
  • Written report, 8–14 pages, with a ranked list of what to change first
  • One revision of the report after you have read it
  • Travel within 80 km of Neuwied
Book this

Pricing review

02

Fixed price

€1,800

2 days of calculation work

You get it by

5 working days

New price list 5 working days after your data reaches us

We recalculate your quoted prices against what the jobs really cost you, position by position.

What's on the card

  • Recalculation of up to 60 quoted positions
  • Machine and setup cost per position, from your own figures
  • A marked list: raise, hold, or stop quoting
  • Discount and rebate practice reviewed against margin
  • One session on site or by video to hand it over
Book this

Digital basics workshop

03

Fixed price

€950

Half a day, up to 6 people

You get it by

2 working days

Tool list and next steps 2 working days later

The unglamorous version: what a 20-person shop actually needs before anyone says the word platform.

What's on the card

  • Half a day in your works office with the people who do the work
  • Inventory of what you already pay for and do not use
  • A shortlist of at most three tools, with prices
  • A migration order — what first, what never
  • Written follow-up with the next three steps
Book this

Half-day intro

04

Fixed price

€0

Half a day on your shop floor

You show us the shop, we ask questions and take notes. Nothing is sold in this half day.

You get it by

2 working days

Written summary within 2 working days

This is the only card on the wall that costs nothing — and the only one we ever ask you to take first.

What's on the card

  • Half a day on site, one consultant
  • A walk through production with whoever runs it
  • Written summary of what we saw, yours to keep
  • A one-page fixed-price offer, or an honest note that we are not the right people
  • No follow-up call unless you ask for one
Book this

Follow-up call

05

Fixed price

€120

45 minutes, phone or video

You get it by

5 working days

Scheduled within 5 working days of your request

For former clients who hit a question six months later and want a straight answer, not a new project.

What's on the card

  • 45 minutes with the consultant who did your work
  • We re-read your file before the call, at our cost
  • Short written note afterwards if you want one
  • Bookable as often as you like, always at the same price
Book this

What the card price already contains

A fixed price is only fixed if the extras are named. Here they are.

Always included, never invoiced separately

  • Travel and time on the road within 80 km of Neuwied
  • Preparation and reading-in before the visit
  • The written report or list — there is no report fee
  • One revision after you have read it
  • Copies of everything we produced, in a format you can open without us

Things this firm does not do

  • No fee based on time spent — not per day, not per week
  • No monthly retainer and no framework contract
  • No share of the savings we find
  • No commission from any software vendor we name
  • No project that starts before you have the price in writing

Work beyond 80 km is quoted with the travel cost written on the same page as the fixed price, before you agree to anything. All prices are net and exclude 19 % VAT.

How it works

Four steps, and you can stop after any of them

  1. 01

    You call, or write

    Two questions from us: how many people, and what is the thing that annoys you most. If we are the wrong firm for it, we say so on that call and suggest who is not.

  2. 02

    Half a day on your floor — €0

    One of us comes to Neuwied or wherever you are within 120 km, puts on boots and walks the shop with you. You get a written summary of what we saw, whether or not anything follows.

  3. 03

    A one-page offer

    Which card off the wall, what it costs, and the date the result lands on your desk. One page, no annexes, no assumptions section.

  4. 04

    We deliver on the promised day

    If we are late, you pay 20 % less, and we tell you before you notice. That has happened twice in six years and both times we said it first.

Practice areas

Four things we are actually good at

We turn down more work than we take. These are the four subjects where we have done the same job often enough to quote a fixed price for it.

A steel vernier caliper measuring a freshly cut sheet-metal bracket on a workbench

Process

Order entry, setup times, scheduling, the trip a part makes through your hall. Measured with a stopwatch and a clipboard, not with a maturity model.

Process check

Pricing

What a job costs you versus what you quoted for it. Machine hours, setup, scrap, the small series nobody wants to price honestly.

Pricing review

Succession, light

Not a full M&A process. The practical version: who knows what, what happens when the boss is in hospital for three weeks, and how to write it down.

Digital basics

Time recording, drawings, job travellers, backups. Getting off paper and out of one shared mailbox — before anyone buys an ERP system.

Digital basics

Who we serve

Small manufacturers in the Neuwied region

We are two people. That limits what we can honestly take on, so we say it plainly.

The shop floor of a small metal fabrication business with a press brake, a lathe and stacked steel sheet under neon strip lights

A good fit

  • 5 to 60 people, owner-run, one site
  • Metal fabrication, machining, plastics, surface finishing
  • Within about 120 km of Neuwied — the Westerwald, the middle Rhine, the Ahr valley
  • You make things to order, in small and medium batches
  • The owner is in the building most days and will walk the floor with us

Not a good fit

  • More than 250 people, or several plants
  • Financing rounds, due diligence, distressed restructuring
  • Anyone who wants a consultant on site every week for a year
  • Anyone who needs a name on the report for a bank or a board
  • Pure software projects with no shop floor attached

Results

Track record, anonymised

Our clients are small enough that naming them would identify their margins to their competitors two towns over. So we don't. Every line below is a real engagement; each client has seen and approved its own row.

Selected engagements 2023–2025, client names withheld by agreement
BusinessPeoplePackageMeasured outcomeYear
Metal fabrication, Westerwald18Process checkSetup time at the press brake down 22 %2024
Machining, Neuwied district26Pricing reviewContribution margin up 6.4 points2024
Welding shop, Andernach12Pricing review41 positions recalculated, 9 withdrawn from the price list2023
Plastics technology, Koblenz31Digital basicsPaper job travellers replaced, 4 hours a week saved in the office2025
Sheet metal work, Bendorf9Process checkLead time on small batches down by 3 days2023
Tool making, Montabaur24Succession, light18-month handover plan, two key roles filled internally2024
Surface finishing, Dierdorf15Pricing review + follow-upDiscount rate cut from 11 % to 4 %2025

Figures are the client's own, measured by the client, six to twelve months after delivery. Where a client could not measure a change, no row appears here.

Take the checklists, use them without us

Three of the lists we work from. They are the actual working documents, not a teaser — you can run the first two yourself over a weekend and never call us.

  • Before the first visit: 12 numbers to have ready

    The figures we ask for in the first ten minutes. Have them on a sheet of paper and the half day is worth twice as much.

    PDF · 2 pages

    Download PDF

  • Check your price list: 9 questions for your costing

    Run these against your own quoted prices. If more than three answers are uncomfortable, the pricing review will pay for itself.

    PDF · 2 pages

    Download PDF

  • Digital basics: what a 20-person shop actually needs

    The short list, in the order we would do it, with realistic prices. Written to be usable without a consultant in the room.

    PDF · 2 pages

    Download PDF

What clients said

Three sentences we were allowed to print

I have paid three consultancies before and I still could not tell you what any of them cost until the invoice came. This one I knew before they drove up.

Managing ownerMetal fabrication, 18 people, Westerwald

The free half day was a real half day. He was in the hall from seven, and the summary said things I did not want to read.

OwnerSheet metal work, 9 people, Bendorf

The new price list cost me two arguments with my longest-standing customer and about forty thousand euros of margin I was giving away.

Managing directorSurface finishing, 15 people, Dierdorf

Team

Two people. Both of us come.

There is no junior who does the work and no partner who appears for the presentation. On the process check you get both of us for the whole day.

Portrait of Reinhard Keßler, a man in his late fifties in a dark green work shirt, standing in a small machine shop

Reinhard Keßler

Process, succession

22 years in sheet-metal fabrication, the last nine as production manager of a 140-person plant in the Westerwald. Started Werkbank Beratung in 2019 after being asked, one time too many, what his day would cost.

Certified industrial foreman, metal (IHK Koblenz)

Portrait of Alina Brenner, a woman in her mid forties in a sand-coloured shirt, standing in a workshop office doorway holding a folded drawing

Alina Brenner

Pricing, digital basics

Eleven years in controlling at a foundry and a plastics processor, where she rebuilt the costing model twice. Does the calculation work and the software conversations, and is the reason we can put a number on a price list in five days.

Business economist (VWA), Neuwied

FAQ

The questions we get on the phone

  • 01What happens if the job turns out to be bigger than you thought?

    The price stays. We estimated it, not you, and getting the estimate wrong is our business risk. If the work is genuinely a different job from the one on the card — a second product family, a second site — we say so before starting and offer a second card, with its own price and its own date.

  • 02Why is the intro free? What is the catch?

    The catch is that we use it to decide whether we want the work. About one in three half days ends with us saying no, and we would rather find that out on your floor than in a proposal. You keep the written summary either way.

  • 03Can I book two packages at once?

    Yes, and the prices simply add up. There is no bundle discount, because a bundle discount would mean one of the two prices was never real.

  • 04You are two people. What if one of you is ill?

    The delivery date moves and we tell you the same day, or we hand back the fee. On the process check both of us are on site, so one of us can always write the report.

  • 05Do you work outside the Neuwied region?

    Occasionally, up to about 250 km. The travel cost is then written on the offer as a separate fixed figure — never as time on the road. Beyond that we are not the sensible choice.

  • 06Will you sign an NDA?

    Yes, yours or ours, before the half day starts. Everything on the results table is published only with the client's written approval of that exact line.

  • 07Do you also implement, or only advise?

    We advise, and we stay reachable afterwards through the €120 follow-up call. We do not staff your project. If implementation needs hands, we will name two or three firms in the region and take nothing from them for it.

Contact

Book the half day

Fill this in, or just phone. Reinhard picks up between 7:30 and 17:00 unless he is standing next to a press brake, in which case he calls back the same day.

Or reach us directly

Office hours

Mon–Thu 7:30–17:00 · Fri 7:30–13:00

Site visits start at 7:00 if that suits your shift. We prefer it.

Where we sit

Werkbank Beratung
Engerser Landstraße 24
56566 Neuwied

First floor above a joinery, in the Engers district. Parking in the yard.

Map

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