Layout, flow, buffer sizing, utility drops, where the data comes out — all of it gets locked before bids go out, usually in a room you're not in. Validate the design while it's still drawings. After the concrete, every fix is a change order.
Every design decision made on an untested assumption is a risk that compounds quietly until construction makes it visible — and expensive. The window where it's still a drawing is short, and it's open right now.
$2M+
in design changes discovered during construction
The flow problem was in the drawing the whole time. You find it when the steel is up and the only remedy costs money you didn't budget.
6 months
of launch delay while competitors advance
A rework loop on the critical path doesn't just slow the build. It moves your launch, and the launch date is the one number everybody above you remembers.
Your name
on the project overrun
You inherited the design decision. You own the overrun, the ramp and the ten years of running whatever got built.
The usual sequence
With the design validated first
Nothing here replaces your design firm or your contractor. We test what they produced against how the plant actually has to run — which is the part nobody in the room is paid to question.
Not a design review meeting. Not a second opinion in a deck. We model the plant you're about to build, run your product mix through it, and tell you exactly where the design will bite.
72 hours
A fast first pass over the design package to surface the highest-risk assumptions: the ones where being wrong is expensive and the drawings don't prove it either way. You get a ranked list in days, not a study in months.
Simulation
Material flow, line balance, buffer sizing, changeover, labor loading and the ramp sequence, modeled against your real product mix. We find the constraint on the screen so it isn't discovered on the floor.
Package
A construction-ready design package with the risks named, the fixes drawn, the cost impact quantified and the implementation sequence worked through. You walk into the bid conversation with validated numbers.
Your design validation includes
Thirty minutes on what you are building, what is already locked, and which decisions are still genuinely open. No deck.
We model the critical process flows, stress the assumptions, and come back with the risks ranked and the cost of each one quantified.
The fixes go into the drawings. You go to bid with a validated design and an implementation plan operations has already agreed to.
The terms
If we can't identify at least three critical design risks, the validation costs you nothing.
Design validation is senior-team work, so we run a small number of these at a time — typically three engagements in a quarter. If the timing matters, say so on the call.
“Axiom has been able to evaluate, understand and validate process designs that saved us from costly mistakes. I would highly recommend any manufacturer work with Axiom Manufacturing Systems for design validation.”
James Lawrence
Director of Operations, ECM Specialty Chemicals
Magic Consulting was formerly branded Axiom Manufacturing Systems; the quote is reproduced as given.
Who runs it
1,900+ automation projects and 30+ years of controls engineering sit behind the validation, across Ignition, Rockwell, AVEVA, Siemens, Omron, Mitsubishi, Schneider, FANUC, Yaskawa, Cognex and ABB. The people reviewing your drawings have commissioned lines that looked like them.
How Magic Consulting worksThe connectivity question always gets pushed to phase two. Then phase two arrives, the panels are closed, the network is flat, and getting a clean signal off a machine means a shutdown you can't schedule. Deciding where the data comes out is a drawing-stage decision that costs almost nothing now and a great deal later.
Read next
The same argument, one layer up: twelve systems that don't agree, and what it takes to make them agree without replacing any of them. If your new plant has to live alongside the two you already run, start there.
Connect What You Already OwnBuilding for a floor you can actually see? The visibility page covers what it takes to get OEE, cycle time and downtime from what the machines actually did.
See What's Actually Happening on the FloorNo. They produce the design; we test it against how the plant has to run. We read what you already paid for rather than redoing it, and we bring the design firm into the findings review. The output is a better version of their package, not a competing one.
The best time is before bids go out, while changes cost drafting hours. It is still worth doing after award and before long-lead procurement, because equipment selection and buffer sizing are usually still movable. Once the concrete is poured and the steel is up, we are into change-order territory and the conversation changes.
No. Most of the work is expansions, line additions, and relocations into an existing building — where the hard part is the interaction with what is already running. We validate the new design against the plant you have, not an empty box.
The current design package, your product mix and volumes, and an hour each with the people who will run the line. If simulation data exists from the design firm we start from it. If it does not, we build the model from your production history.
The first pass is measured in days, and it runs in parallel with work that is already happening. The schedule risk you should worry about is the rework loop during construction, which is measured in months.
We will tell you what the design needs and what we think of the options, and that recommendation is not tied to anyone's product line — including ours. Magic Consulting recommends the right tool, not necessarily a Magic tool. That independence is the whole reason the recommendation is worth anything.
Tell us what you're building and which decisions are still open. We'll tell you on the call whether a validation is worth your money at this stage — and if it isn't, we'll say that too.
