True North Solutions

Transform your business with Lean Digital Intelligence

Every competitor can now buy the same intelligence. The advantage has moved to where you deploy it — and, just as importantly, where you do not.

Lean removes the waste. Forward-deployed engineering builds the fix.

The argument in one page

Access was never the bottleneck

95%
of enterprise AI pilots fail to reach production. Not because the models were weak — because the decision about where to point them was never made properly.
Source: MIT, 2025 — enterprise generative-AI pilots failing to reach production.
The macro realityFrontier AI is commoditized. Every competitor has access to the same models, at the same price, on the same day.
The real edgeKnowing exactly where to deploy it inside your operations — and where not to.
Our claimThat is a Lean judgment problem. It is the discipline TNS has practised for 30 years.

The judgment layer

Every workflow step belongs in exactly one of three lanes

Most steps land here

Deterministic software

Rule-based, predictable steps. If/then logic and API calls — cheapest and most reliable.
A narrow slice

AI agent judgment

Categorisation and drafting where a model adds real judgment. Applied narrowly, never everywhere.
Exceptions only

Human-in-the-loop

High-risk, low-confidence or exception cases routed to a person before any action is taken.

Routed once, before anything is built. Pointing a model at every step is how the 95% happens.

See the method working

Four working tools, not a slide describing them

Tool 01

Judgment Lane Classifier

Score a process on judgment, risk, volume and exception rate. It routes the work to a lane — and says so plainly when the answer is "not AI".

Free to runNo model used
Open the tool →
Tool 02

Automation ROI Calculator

Payback modelled on published wage data — US, Singapore and India. Selectable by region, because the honest answer changes with the labour market.

Free to runPublic data
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Tool 03

AI Opportunity Audit

Describe how a process runs today. Returns a value stream with the waste named, every step routed to a lane, prioritised opportunities and the honest risks.

Live model
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Tool 04

Agent Audit Trail

An agent checks five supplier certificates against a forging batch spec — every read, conversion and decision logged. It catches the defects and holds the batch.

Live modelSaved run free
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Flow diagrams

What happens inside each tool

One diagram per tool, in plain language — what goes in, what the system decides, where a human stays in the loop, and what comes out. Colour-coded by lane.

See the diagrams →

The method

How we find the work before we build anything

The discovery engine: three views of the same operation — value stream mapping at macro level, system log analysis at micro level, and Gemba on-site observation at ground level, each with its blind spot named.
The discovery engineThree views of the same operation, because no single one is complete. Logs show when a button was clicked. They do not show the workaround that keeps the line running.
The 5A approach: Assess, Align, Awaken, Achieve, Augment — the five stages applied to every TNS engagement.
One methodology, five stagesApplied to every engagement since the 1990s. The reason results hold after we leave is that the client team owns the system, not the consultant.
How an engagement is built: Hoshin Kanri and assessment as fixed bands, one or more chosen interventions, then deploy, monitor and measure results.
How an engagement is builtTwo fixed bands and one choice. We never start from what is 'automatable' — we start from what leadership already agreed.

Click any diagram to open it full size.

Track record

The judgment we are applying to AI is the judgment we have been paid for since 2018

55% → 90%
On-time delivery, $100M manufacturer, nine months
>30%
Operating cost reduction, same engagement
63–84%
Cost improvement across delivered microbot cases
2.2 months
Breakeven on $34,200 of programme cost
10
Industries optimized
4
Continents
50+
Transformation success stories
5,000
People through transformation programmes

Source: TNS client engagements and internal records. Lean alone — no AI involved — already moves the numbers that matter to the P&L.

Start with a four-day operational assessment

On site, with your team. We map the value stream, read your own event log, and watch the work actually happen — then return a prioritised view of which steps warrant deterministic automation, which warrant AI judgment, and which should stay with a person. It also sets the baseline, so when the work is live the same analysis measures what changed.

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