Your operations,
finally under control.

AscentOS builds production scheduling software and Microsoft Copilot agents for Australian manufacturers. If you quote it, engineer it and build it to a customer order, our products are built for the way you actually work.

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30+
Years operations experience
13
Operational disciplines assessed
35+
Users on software we support
ASCENT FOREMAN
Factory Board Lead Time Scenario
JobProductPhaseDueStatus
4821Pressure Vessel AssyWeld14 SepRunning
4835Conveyor FrameworkFit Out18 SepRunning
4847Pump Station UnitCut22 SepOn Plan
4852Skid Frame 2400Paint25 SepAt Risk
4860Tank Shell 12kLRoll01 OctOn Plan
Configured lead time, corrected against observed phase movement
Cut & Prep2.0d → 1.4d
Weld4.0d → 5.6d
Fit Out3.0d → 3.1d
Paint & Cure2.5d → 3.4d
Test & Sign-off1.5d → 1.2d
Awaiting acceptance by scheduler  ·  214 phase movements observed
Scenario comparison  ·  Job 4852 running late
Option A
Hold the sequence. Absorb the delay downstream.
Option B
Resequence paint. Pull 4860 forward one bay.
78%
94%
On time
6 jobs
1 job
Late
12 Oct
06 Oct
Last finish
Applied only when a named scheduler accepts it
94%
On-time delivery
5
Jobs in build
214
Movements observed
1
Jobs at risk
Ascent Operations Diagnostic

Know where to focus first.

The Ascent Operations Diagnostic is our entry product and the foundation of every client engagement. It combines a rigorous 260-question structured assessment with a direct interview with your leadership team. The output is a comprehensive scored report with findings, charts, and a prioritised roadmap of exactly where to focus, and in what order.

Fixed Price
$5,000
Delivered in 5–7 business days  ·  Remote  ·  No travel costs
  • 260-question Ascent Maturity Assessment across 13 operational disciplines
  • Structured interview with founders and key leaders to uncover real pain points
  • Scored report with charts, domain breakdowns, and maturity ratings
  • Prioritised improvement roadmap, top opportunities ranked by impact
  • Recommendations on which Ascent applications address each identified gap
  • 60-minute debrief call to walk through every finding in the report
Book a Discovery Call
260
Assessment Questions
13
Operational Disciplines
0–5
Maturity Score Scale
4.5
Class A Benchmark: the global standard for world-class operations
Purchasing & Procurement
Inventory Management
Production Scheduling
Sales & Operations Planning
Demand Management
Supply Chain Management
Financial Planning
Data Management
People & Leadership
Process & Quality
Technology & Systems
Customer Management
Continuous Improvement
Who We Work With

Built for manufacturers
who are ready to improve how they operate.

We work with owner-led and GM-led manufacturing and industrial businesses across Australia. If your operation is running on gut feel and you're ready to bring structure, visibility, and intelligence to how you run it, we should talk.

Industry
Manufacturing & Industrial Services
Any business that makes, moves, maintains, or services physical things, from food and beverage to heavy industry, civil, mining services, and everything in between.
Geography
Australia-Wide
We work with businesses nationally, delivered remotely.
Decision-Maker
Owner / CEO / GM / CFO
We deal directly with the people who own the problem, not IT departments or procurement committees.
Sound familiar?
We have initiatives everywhere but nothing ever closes.
I don't trust the numbers my team gives me.
Everyone does things their own way. There's no standard across the business.
We're reactive. Meetings happen but nothing changes.
Customers keep asking when their job will be ready and I genuinely have no idea what to tell them.
We've outgrown spreadsheets but can't justify a full ERP.
Engagement Process

Every engagement starts with the Ascent Operations Diagnostic.

We start by understanding exactly where your business is today, scored against a Class A benchmark across 13 operational disciplines. From there, we show you where to focus, what it will take, and how our applications deliver the improvement. No guesswork. No generic advice.

01
The Ascent Operations Diagnostic
We run the 260-question Ascent Maturity Assessment with your leadership team and conduct a structured interview to understand your real pain points. The output is a comprehensive scored report: maturity ratings across every operational discipline, priority findings, and a clear roadmap of where to focus first.
02
Findings, Priorities and Recommendations
We walk you through the report in a 60-minute debrief. You see exactly where your operation scores against the Class A benchmark, which gaps are costing you the most, and which Ascent applications will deliver the greatest improvement. The priorities are yours to keep, regardless of what comes next.
03
Put the findings to work
The roadmap is yours to act on however you choose. Where the findings point at something AscentOS already does, we configure it to your operation and deploy it. Scope and price are agreed before any work starts. Where they point somewhere else, we will say so and tell you what to look for instead.
What We Build

Three products.
One operational picture.

Every engagement starts with the Diagnostic. What it finds determines what comes next. AscentOS is 2 products, not an open build shop. Both are configured to your operation. Neither is a custom application written from scratch, because software that only 1 business runs is software that only 1 person can support.

Ascent Foreman
Production Scheduling Software
Foreman is a production scheduler for make-to-order and engineer-to-order manufacturers. It sits beside your ERP rather than inside it, and it plans against the demand your factory actually has.

Most schedulers accept the lead times someone typed in years ago and never revisit them. Foreman treats every configured lead time as an estimate, then corrects it against what your shop floor actually does, phase by phase. The plan gets more accurate the longer you use it.

Every figure a user sees comes from a deterministic scheduling engine. No learned correction reaches your live schedule until a named person accepts it.
Example applications
Factory board Planning workspace Scenario comparison Workstation loading Lead time correction Delivery date confidence
Ascent Agents
Microsoft Copilot Agents
Purpose-built AI agents that answer questions and take action across your own documents and systems, deployed inside your own Microsoft 365 environment. Your team works with them through Teams, SharePoint and Outlook, which they already use.

An agent grounded on your documents answers what your business knows. An agent connected to your live systems answers what your business is doing right now. We build both, and we connect agents to the tools you already run: your ERP, HubSpot, Xero, SharePoint, your job and inventory data. A single question can pull from several of them at once.

We handle the whole build: preparing your source documents into machine-readable form, designing the knowledge base, building the connections, testing, deploying to your tenant, then supporting it under a managed retainer. The agent lives in your tenant, under your identity and security controls.
Example applications
ERP support and training Live job and stock status Sales intelligence from CRM Procurement queries Supplier communications Cross-system reporting
Ascent Operations Diagnostic
Where To Focus First
A fixed-price assessment of how your business plans, schedules, buys and measures, scored across 13 operational disciplines against a Class A benchmark.

It is the entry point to both products above, and it stands on its own. You receive a scored report, priority findings and a ranked improvement roadmap, and you keep that roadmap whether you build anything with us or not.

Delivered remotely in 5 to 7 business days, with a 60-minute debrief to walk through every finding.
What you receive
260-question assessment Leadership interview Scored maturity report Priority findings Improvement roadmap 60-minute debrief
Who Builds This
Ivan Skobe, Founder, Ascent Operating Systems
MCIPS Chartered CPIM CSCP FIML
Ivan Skobe
Founder, Ascent Operating Systems

30+ years on production floors. Not advising from the outside, actually doing it. Supply chain, procurement, production scheduling, inventory management, ERP implementations. The full stack, at real manufacturers, across Australia.

I built AscentOS because I spent 30 years watching the same problems repeat themselves in business after business. Inventory nobody trusted. Purchasing that ran through phone calls and spreadsheets. Production schedules that existed in one person's head. Leaders who knew something was fundamentally wrong but couldn't get traction on fixing it.

The tools I build are the tools I wish had existed when I was running these floors. Purpose-built for how manufacturing actually works, not adapted from something designed for a different industry.

Every engagement is with me directly. No junior staff, no handoffs, no account managers. You deal with the person who has run the operations you're trying to fix.

Track record

What we have built, and where it runs.

Software we have designed, built and support, running daily inside real manufacturing and industrial businesses.

Production Scheduler
Production scheduler, purpose built for one manufacturer
A scheduling application we designed, built and support for an Australian industrial manufacturer. It runs daily across 3 operating sites for a workforce of 35+, replacing spreadsheets and tribal knowledge with a single real time picture. Built and deployed in under 10 weeks.

That system is not Ascent Foreman. It is where Foreman came from. Ten weeks inside a real factory schedule taught us which assumptions every scheduler makes and gets wrong, and Foreman is the product built on that answer.
AI Agents in Microsoft 365
Operational AI agents running inside a live Microsoft 365 environment
Custom AI agents deployed within an existing Microsoft 365 environment (Teams, SharePoint, Outlook) automating operational workflows and surfacing real-time intelligence without replacing the tools the team already uses. No new software to learn. No IT infrastructure required.

Client details withheld at their request. References available to serious enquiries.

Common Questions

What you're probably wondering.

What exactly do I get from the Operations Diagnostic?
A scored maturity report across 13 operational disciplines, a structured interview with your leadership team, priority findings with root cause analysis, and a ranked improvement roadmap. You also get a 60-minute debrief where we walk through every finding. The deliverable is a document you can act on, not a presentation that sits in a drawer.
Do I need to be in the same city as you?
No. Every engagement is delivered remotely. The Diagnostic interview is conducted via video call, the assessment is completed online, and the report is delivered digitally. We work with businesses across Australia without anyone needing to travel.
We already have an ERP. Is the Diagnostic still relevant?
Usually more relevant, not less. Most of the businesses we work with have an ERP. The Diagnostic assesses whether your processes and disciplines are mature enough to get value from it. ERP maturity is one of the 13 disciplines we score. A system is only as good as the processes it's built on.
How is this different from hiring a consultant?
The Diagnostic is a fixed-price product with a defined deliverable, not an open-ended engagement billed by the day. You know exactly what you're getting and what it costs before we start. There are no ongoing retainers, no ambiguous scope, and no surprises. If we build anything after the Diagnostic, that is also fixed scope and fixed price, agreed before a single line of work begins.
What happens after the Diagnostic?
You receive your report and roadmap. What happens next is entirely your decision. Some clients take the roadmap and act on it internally. Others work with us to build the specific applications the Diagnostic identifies. There is no obligation to proceed beyond the Diagnostic, and no pressure to do so.
$5,000 feels significant. How do I know it's worth it?
The Diagnostic looks for cost you are already carrying and cannot see: stock you do not need, work being done by hand that does not need to be, and margin lost to rework and expediting. What it finds depends entirely on your operation, so we will not put a number on it before we have looked. What you get is fixed regardless: a scored report, ranked findings, and a roadmap you keep whether you build anything with us or not. The 30 minute discovery call costs nothing and will tell you whether the Diagnostic fits before you commit to anything.
Get Started

Ready to stop firefighting
and start operating?

Start with a 30-minute discovery call. We'll understand your operation, identify where the pressure is, and show you exactly how the Ascent Operations Diagnostic gives you the clarity to move forward with confidence.

Book a Discovery Call
Or reach out directly hello@ascentoperatingsystems.com.au