The number your financial statements have never shown you.
Calculated from your own operational data. In your presence. In minutes.
There is a cost in your operation your reporting will never show you.
I surface a category of hidden cost that accumulates invisibly in manufacturing operations, in voluntary turnover, productivity loss, and performance gaps, long before it appears in your financial reporting.
I quantify it from your own operational data, find its root causes, and work with your leadership team to eliminate it permanently. The result is recovered profit margin and a leadership team capable of sustaining that recovery without ongoing outside help.
- Find the hidden financial cost your statements never show you
- Calculate it in plain dollars from your own data in minutes
- Locate exactly where and why it is happening
- Eliminate it by addressing root causes, not symptoms
- Build your leadership team’s capability to sustain the recovery
- Recover the margin that has been hiding in your operation
Before and after the recovery
Before
- The hidden cost is invisible, buried, not on any line item
- Leadership is unaware it is even happening
- Margin erodes quietly, month after month
After
- The cost is quantified as a specific dollar figure
- Root causes are identified and addressed
- Margin is recovered, permanently
Fifty years inside manufacturing, floor to boardroom.
I am Larry Szeliga, a Manufacturing Profit Recovery Specialist with fifty years of experience inside manufacturing organizations. I started as a Production Supervisor at General Motors and finished as CEO and Board Member of a global joint venture with Michelin Tire. I have consulted with some of the largest manufacturing companies in the world. I know what happens on your floor because I have spent a career there.
- Production Supervisor at General Motors – 80 direct reports, union floor
- Statistical Process Coordinator – GM Hardware Manufacturing
- Manager of Quality Improvement Consulting – Chevrolet-Pontiac, GM of Canada
- Master’s in Human Resources & Organizational Development
- Consultant to GM, Ford, Chrysler, Saturn, GE Medical, Colgate-Palmolive
- CEO & Board Member – global joint venture with Michelin Tire
Currently based in Coshocton, Ohio. Manufacturing is my community, not just my profession.
The number your financial statements have never shown you.
Calculated from your own operational data. In your presence. In minutes.
What it does
- Takes four operational inputs any CEO or CFO can provide from memory
- Produces a specific financial figure for your hidden cost in minutes
- Calculates from your own data, not industry averages
- Delivers the result in your presence so you can trace every component
Why it matters
- Most organizations make workforce-stability decisions without accurate financial data
- The hidden cost of standards erosion never appears in standard reporting
- Without a number the problem stays invisible, and invisible problems don’t get solved
- The number consistently surprises even financially sophisticated teams
The alternatives
- The SHRM Turnover Cost Calculator requires 46 inputs and 45–70 hours; completion below 30%
- Most organizations simply guess, or ignore the hidden cost entirely
- No publicly available tool produces a comparable result from this input set
The benefit
- Turns an invisible problem into a specific, actionable financial figure
- Creates the CEO engagement that makes the recovery possible
- Establishes a benchmark against which the recovery is measured
- Conservative enough to be credible, large enough to demand action
Every engagement starts with one number.
Before discussing solutions, I calculate something most manufacturing companies have never measured — the hidden cost of voluntary turnover.
Using four numbers you already know, I can produce a conservative estimate in about five minutes. That estimate becomes the starting point for deciding whether additional work makes financial sense.
The Two-Step Process
Step 1
Executive Cost Review
Provide 4 numbers. Receive your hidden cost estimate.
Receive Your Hidden Cost Estimate
A specific dollar figure based on your own financial data.
Decide Whether It's Worth Pursuing
You decide if it makes financial sense to move forward.
Step 2
The CLEAR Process™
Identify the causes. Eliminate the cost. Recover hidden profit.
Recover Hidden Profit
Measurable results. Stronger leadership. Higher profitability.
Complimentary Executive Cost Review
This isn’t a sales presentation, it’s a working session. During our conversation, I’ll ask for four numbers that every CEO or CFO either knows or can obtain in a few minutes, then calculate a conservative estimate of what voluntary turnover is costing your organization each year.
I emphasize conservative because I would rather understate the opportunity than overstate it. Independent research suggests the actual financial impact is often two to four times higher. Even so, the conservative estimate alone is usually enough to justify a closer look.
- Average hourly wage
- Benefits percentage
- Voluntary resignations in the past 12 months
- Operating margin (optional)
- A dollar estimate based on your own financial data
- An explanation of how the estimate was calculated
- A clear understanding of where those costs come from
- An honest discussion about whether further work makes financial sense
No proposal. No pressure. Just your numbers.
The CLEAR Process™
If the Executive Cost Review identifies a meaningful financial opportunity — and it usually does — we’ll discuss whether the CLEAR Process is the right fit. It’s a structured six-month engagement designed to identify unnecessary turnover, eliminate its causes, and recover the hidden costs affecting your operation.
Calculate
We verify the financial baseline established during the Executive Cost Review. This becomes the benchmark we’ll use to measure results.
Locate
We determine where unnecessary turnover is occurring and, more importantly, why. Rather than relying on surveys or assumptions, we examine leadership practices, supervisory consistency, accountability, and how standards are actually applied throughout the organization.
Eliminate
Working alongside your leadership team, we develop practical solutions that address the causes of the problem — not just the symptoms. Because your leaders help build the solutions, they’re far more likely to sustain them.
Arm
We strengthen your leadership team’s ability to recognize early warning signs, respond consistently, and prevent the same issues from returning. The goal is to leave your organization stronger — not dependent on outside consultants.
Recover
At the end of the engagement, we measure the financial improvement against the baseline established at the beginning. The objective is simple:
- Recover hidden costs
- Improve consistency
- Strengthen leadership
- Increase profitability
Why CEO participation matters
Organizations don’t change because someone in HR wants them to. They change when the CEO is actively involved. Research conducted over many years consistently shows that organizational improvement efforts are significantly more successful when the CEO leads the effort rather than delegates it.
That’s why I work directly with the CEO throughout the CLEAR Process. If you’re looking for something you can hand off to someone else, this probably isn’t the right engagement. If you’re prepared to take an active role in improving your organization’s performance, we’ll work well together.
What the CLEAR Process is not
- Executive coaching
- Employee engagement training
- A culture survey
- A leadership seminar
- Traditional consulting
It is a structured, financially focused process that identifies hidden costs, corrects the conditions creating them, and equips your leadership team to sustain the improvements long after the engagement ends.
Three things I have watched happen on the floor.
These are not testimonials. They are anonymized real-world examples of how standards erosion quietly drains margin.
Joe and Bill — The Cost of Inconsistent Standards
Joe and Bill. Same job. Same tenure. Same performance record. Joe gets written up for arriving eight minutes late. Bill arrives twenty-two minutes late the same week, under a different supervisor, and hears nothing.
Joe is not angry. Joe is done. He does not say anything. He starts looking. Six weeks later he is gone, and his exit interview says “better opportunity.” Every person who witnessed what happened to Joe made a quiet calculation about whether their effort would be treated fairly here. Some of them started looking too.
The lesson – Unexplained turnover is almost never unexplained. Someone on the floor knows exactly why they left. The question is whether leadership ever finds out — and what it costs before they do.
The Banner and the Broken Standard — What the Workforce Actually Sees
There is a banner on the wall. It says “Quality Is Our Standard.” Below it, the floor supervisor is approving parts that do not meet spec, because the end-of-month pressure is on and there is no time to slow the line.
The inspector knows. The supervisor knows. And every hourly employee on that floor knows. The banner remains on the wall. The standard comes down.
The lesson – The real policy of an organization is not what is written. It is what supervisors do when conditions are difficult — and the stories employees tell about what they observe become the operating reality, regardless of the policy manual.
The Cascading Standard — When One Deviation Teaches the Next
A quality inspector flags a non-conforming container. His supervisor overrules him and ships it anyway. The product moves. The customer never knows. Weeks later the same inspector sees the same non-conformance on the same product. He remembers what happened last time. He releases it for shipping, without a tag, without a notification, without a word.
The customer rejects the container. Ships it back freight collect. The Quality Manager calls the inspector in and suspends him. The root cause was not the inspector’s decision. It was the supervisor’s deviation weeks earlier, and what that deviation taught everyone who witnessed it about what the real standard was.
The lesson – One deviation does not stay contained. It teaches the next person what the real standard is. The returned shipment, the freight bill, the customer-relationship damage, the disciplinary action, the disengagement — none of it appears on the P&L. All of it is recoverable. But only if you find it before something larger breaks.
Ready to see the number?
The conversation starts with four data points and takes about five minutes. What you learn from it will change how you look at your financial reporting, permanently.
A CEO who is ready to act right now will call. A CEO who is interested but not yet ready will email. Use whichever fits where you are today.