For CEOs, Presidents, and COOs running $10M to $100M manufacturing, distribution, and logistics operations. You've been hearing "we're working on it" for longer than you should have. Time to bring in someone who'll actually find the root cause, not manage around it.
Schedule a Consultation → See the ZIPS Method35 years • Field tech to founder
Most fractional CTOs come from a single domain and advise from a distance. Rod has built infrastructure from scratch, written the automation, run the war rooms, and led the teams. Field tech, infrastructure director, founder, and senior technical leader at companies you'd recognize. He shows up, finds what's actually wrong, and builds the fix so it runs without him.
Every engagement starts the same way. Find the real problem, in plain language, before anyone commits to a fix. The audit stands on its own. Most clients use it as the on-ramp to the 90-day engagement.
A 90-minute working session, interviews with 3 to 5 people on the floor, hands-on review across infrastructure, platforms, and the manual workarounds living in people's heads. You get root cause in plain language, not a 40-page deck that needs a translator.
Start with the audit View service details →Audit findings become the blueprint. Primary solution work starts in week one, not week four. Metrics get defined up front so we both know what "fixed" looks like. By day 30 you have real progress on the core problem, in writing, not a slide deck about what we plan to do.
Run the 90-day fix View service details →After the fix lands, the next problem is already forming. A retainer keeps a technically fluent partner close to the operation so failures get caught early, vendor conversations get straight answers, and your team keeps building capability instead of dependency.
Continue the work View service details →If something has been "almost fixed" for too long, the problem isn't where everyone is looking. It usually lives between the domains. That's where I work.
30 minutes. No technical prep required.
Built over 35 years of finding what nobody else could find. ZIPS works across operations, technology, finance, logistics, and manufacturing. It's how a six-month war room becomes a two-week fix.
The prerequisite. If you do not know what "working" looks like, you cannot know what "broken" looks like.
Draw the system before you touch anything. This is the step most people skip and why most people fail.
You are allowed to have multiple issues occurring at the same time. Stop forcing a single root cause.
You cannot find what you cannot see. Identify exactly where you can look before you test.
Form a hypothesis before you design a test. Commit to what you expect before you look. Discipline over guessing, every time.
A failed test that matches your prediction still proves something. When the direct path is blocked, an indirect test may reveal the answer.
Divide the problem in half and measure at the center. Eliminate half the system. Repeat.
Never change more than one thing at once. Two changes at once causes confusion.
After the fix, classify why the problem existed in the first place. This is how you prevent the next one.
These are the conversations that get to the bottom of whether the work I do is a fit for what you're up against. Pick one and bring it to the call.
That everyone's looking in the wrong place. Domain owners declare their layer clean. The failure lives between the domains, where nobody owns the intersection.
Follow the data instead of the assumptions. Most teams form a hypothesis early and spend months trying to prove it. Throw out the priors. Look at what's actually happening.
Every system, process, and framework I build is designed to run without me. If the team can't operate it after I'm gone, I didn't finish the job.
In most shops, it's the reason automation never gets built. Find the policy that's blocking you, rewrite it, then build the solution. Compliance is a design constraint, not a wall.
There was absolutely nothing he could improve upon what Rod had built.
Brian Costales · Author of the O'Reilly Sendmail Book · After auditing Rod's rebuild of an entire ISP infrastructure