Research
We wrote a page on each problem, with the receipts.
Every figure on these pages belongs to somebody else, and every source is printed at the bottom. If you already know the problem, skip to why nobody has fixed it.
42 problems researched so far, across 7 markets.
Not sure which one
Your problem may not be on this list yet.
These are the ones we have written up. Tell us yours and we will say plainly whether we have seen it before, and what the figures look like where we have.
The traceability deadline moved to 2028, and nothing else changed
Congress directed the FDA not to enforce the food traceability rule before July 2028. The records the rule asks for are still not being produced, and the extension does not produce them.
EuropeEvery customer wants its own spec sheet, and a person writes each one
Ingredient and seasoning makers sell blends made for one customer. Each customer then asks for a specification, an allergen list and a label in its own format.
United StatesThe estate you just bought brings its own club list
A wine group buys an estate. It arrives with its own club members, its own till and its own sales history, and none of it matches the rest.
Building productivity rose. Highways and bridges went backwards
Official measures split by sector. Industrial building improved across both measured periods; highway, street and bridge work declined after 2019.
United Kingdom (England and Wales first)Every load of waste now has to be reported within two working days
From 1 October 2026, permitted waste sites in England and Wales must log each load on a national service within two working days.
Major events now cost more outage hours than every ordinary year combined
Interruptions from major events averaged nearly nine hours per customer in 2024, against about four hours a year for the decade before.
UK and European UnionYou run the treatment plant, but its history is in shift logs
Firms that build and run water and wastewater plants keep each plant's real story in operator logs and service reports. Regulators are asking more of those plants every year.
Productivity fell in fourteen of the twenty manufacturing groups measured
Federal figures show labour productivity declining across most manufacturing industry groups. Machine data is abundant. The work between machines is not recorded at all.
United StatesEvery plant you add keeps its own production record
Contract device makers grow by buying plants. Each one arrives with its own travellers, lot numbering and record format, and the auditor still expects one traceable story.
EuropeEvery hotel project arrives as a different drawing set
Contract furniture makers win hotel and retail projects on bespoke work. Each brief arrives as someone else's drawings, schedules and specs, and quoting waits for a person to read them all.
European UnionEvery line you built is one of a kind, and its history is in service notes
Makers of packing and sorting lines build each one to order, then service it for years. The real record of each line sits in service reports and engineers' notes.
EuropeEach shop in the group quotes alone, from its own past jobs
Groups of contract manufacturers grow by buying local shops. Each shop still quotes from its own records, so the group never sees what it already knows.
United StatesThe shop you just bought can make parts your estimators never quote
Precision machining groups grow by buying shops. Each shop arrives with its own machines, job history and quoting habits, and requests still land wherever the customer first sent them.
EuropeOne heat network, two pipe ranges, and every bid costed by hand
Pipe makers now sell complete heat-network systems. Each bid still means reading someone else's network plans and costing every run by hand, often in two separate catalogues.
There is a monthly payment you are allowed to bill and are not
A new bundled monthly code. Most practices qualify. Most are billing nothing.
United StatesIn January 2027 prior authorisation gets an API. Almost nobody is ready.
The payers are legally obliged to open up. The providers who built the workflow first will own the transition.
One in four residents falls each year, and the warning was in the logs
Falls are the leading cause of injury death for people over 65. The signals that precede one are already being recorded, in systems that do not talk.
United StatesNobody wants a sixth dashboard
The sensors work. The problem is that each one arrived with its own screen.
Nine out of ten denials are never appealed
Appealing works nineteen times out of twenty. Almost nobody has the hours to do it.
United StatesThe condition was in the nursing note. It never reached the MDS.
The qualifying detail is usually already written down. It just never made it onto the assessment.
United StatesEvery building reports. Nobody can see the portfolio.
The data exists in every building. Getting it into one place still means exports and re-keying.
The official inventory number arrives six weeks after the month it describes
Federal inventories data is published roughly six weeks after the reference month closes. Most internal reporting runs on a similar lag, for the same reasons.
United StatesThe distributor you just bought still takes orders its own way
After an add-on acquisition, two catalogues describe the same products differently. Orders keep arriving in the old formats while the integration plan waits on a migration.
United StatesThe order confirmation came back different from the order you placed
Dealers place one project's order across many manufacturers. Each maker confirms it in its own format, and the lines that changed are easy to miss.
European UnionYour trucks, warehouses and freight desk each hold part of one customer's margin
Logistics groups grow by buying carriers, warehouses and freight brokers. Each one keeps its own shipment and billing records. Nobody can see one customer's full margin.
Ireland and United KingdomEvery product in the catalogue now answers to two rulebooks
A lab distributor that buys a UK business now sells under EU and GB rules at once. Each product's deadline sits in a supplier letter or certificate.
More than a third of crashed trucks already had out-of-service defects
Federal crash analysis found over a third of inspected trucks carried maintenance defects serious enough to have grounded them beforehand.
Europe (EASA and UK rules)Every operator sends its work package in its own format
Independent maintenance shops serve many operators at many stations. Each operator sends task cards and work packages its own way, and the shop must keep every record for years.
Not here yet
Your problem is probably on the list we have not written up.
We are working through these one at a time, because a page written without research is worse than no page. If yours is missing, the call is the faster route anyway.
Research is how we start. Building is what we do.
These pages exist because we looked something up properly. The work that follows is a system, a device, or both.
See everything we build-
Software -
Hardware -
Ways of working -
Whole ventures
However hard, whatever it is
These are the ones we wrote up. There are many more.
A page here exists because somebody read the regulator, the study and the data. That is the same thing we would do for a problem that has no page yet, and it does not take longer.
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01 We sit with you
Days where the work happens, not a workshop in a meeting room. We watch the job get done and write down the shortcuts nobody wrote down.
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02 We read everything
Your data, your rules, your vendors and their documentation, and the published research on your sector. We report what is actually in there.
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03 We break it to first principles
Not which tool fixes this. What is actually causing it, taken apart until we reach the piece that cannot be divided further.
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04 Then we build
Weeks, not quarters. By this point we are not guessing what to build, and guessing is the thing that makes projects long.
Intelligence, plumbed in
These pages exist because somebody read the source.
Same discipline in the build: a scored test set from your records, not a demo on three hand-picked rows.
How we make AI survive real data-
Connectors -
A semantic layer -
Evals you can check