About WPI
Chad DeBoer, Founder — Wolverine Process Improvement
I started my career as a mechanical design engineer. That's where my education is, and it's where I learned to think in systems — if you design something right, it works whether or not anyone's watching. If you design it wrong, no amount of management attention fixes it.
I spent the first 18 years in engineering. Then I moved into operations leadership — Director, Senior Director — and spent 17 years running teams, facilities, and strategy across manufacturing and distribution. The last 7 of those years were spent leading continuous improvement and business expansions for a national building products distributor with 7 distribution centers.
The engineering background changed how I approached operations. I didn't trust opinions. I trusted data. I found that a lot of leaders were making decisions based on one side of a story, or on emotion, or on "we've always done it this way." Data takes emotions and opinions out of the equation. It shows you what's actually happening — not what someone thinks is happening, or what they want to be happening.
The most effective thing I ever did wasn't a process redesign or a cost model. It was developing teams from across multiple facilities to work toward one goal — and asking for input from people who had never been asked. Seeing it in their eyes that they mattered, that their knowledge of how the floor actually runs was valued — that changed everything. The best ideas didn't come from the office. They came from the people doing the work.
This is why Keystone starts on the floor, not in a conference room.
Over 17 years in operations, I saw the same pattern play out again and again — strong data, clear ROI, and leadership that wasn't ready to move. Not because the math was wrong, but because change is uncomfortable. Good analysis would sit in a slide deck. Obvious improvements would stall in committee. The gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it was where most companies lost the most money.
I started WPI to work with companies that are past that — where the question isn't whether to act, it's how fast.
Both of WPI's core platforms were built inside a real operation — to solve real problems I was dealing with every day. They weren't designed as products first. They proved themselves as tools, and then became products.
Started in 2021 as an internal audit and accountability system for a 7-facility distribution network. Built because paper checklists and Excel spreadsheets weren't creating accountability — they were creating the illusion of it. The methodology is still in use at the operation where it was built.
Started as an internal route profitability tool to answer a question nobody could answer: which customers and routes are actually profitable when you account for every mile, every hour, and every gallon? The predecessor is still in use today. WPI RouteIQ is the purpose-built platform that takes it where it always needed to go.
This isn't a traditional consulting firm. I didn't start WPI because I wanted to give advice. I started it because I spent years building tools and systems that worked — and I wanted to bring them to companies that have the commitment to actually use them.
WPI is for operations leaders who know something is off, who are tired of making decisions on gut feel and incomplete data, and who are ready to do something about it. Not ready to talk about doing something. Ready to do it.
If that's you — let's go to work.