# Ming's Story: A 24-Month AI Transformation in a Packaging Plant

> 🌐 Language: [繁體中文](CLIENT_JOURNEY_STORY.md) ｜ English ｜ [Deutsch](CLIENT_JOURNEY_STORY_DE.md) ｜ [Français](CLIENT_JOURNEY_STORY_FR.md) ｜ [Español](CLIENT_JOURNEY_STORY_ES.md) ｜ [日本語](CLIENT_JOURNEY_STORY_JA.md) ｜ [한국어](CLIENT_JOURNEY_STORY_KR.md)
>
> A 20-minute story that helps you understand the 8-stage methodology. No tool tables, no acronyms, no consultant jargon.

Apache License 2.0 · Author: Morris Lu · Tiger AI

Last updated: 2026-05-15

---

> ⚠️ **Important Academic Integrity Disclaimer**
>
> **"Ming" and "MingChang Packaging" are AI-generated fictional characters and a fictional company, NOT real**. This story is teaching material designed to help non-technical readers grasp the 8-stage methodology quickly. All numbers (company size, KPIs, budgets, timelines, Customer A's order drop percentage) are illustrative only.
>
> - Per [`../03_Consulting_Report/CONSULTING_TOOLKIT_TEMPLATES_EN.md`](../03_Consulting_Report/CONSULTING_TOOLKIT_TEMPLATES_EN.md) Tool 8.9, this is **L0 AI-Simulated Teaching Case** (below L1)
> - Real longitudinal cases will exist only after [`../90_References/PILOT_STUDY_PROTOCOL_EN.md`](../90_References/PILOT_STUDY_PROTOCOL_EN.md) 18-24 month empirical study completes
> - This story **must NOT** be used as "we have a real client who did this" external marketing

---

## Meet the Protagonist

**Ming**, 55, Chairman of MingChang Packaging.
Located in City X (fictional location, a regional science park), 700 employees, semiconductor packaging & testing, NT$ 1.2B annual revenue.
His father started the company with one wire bonder in the 1990s; Ming took over in 2010 and grew it into a mid-tier supplier to major Customer A.
Ming is proud of two things: his daughter got into a top university, and his company hasn't lost money in 10 years.

But in early 2025, he started losing sleep.

---

## Chapter 1 ── "I Thought We Weren't That Bad"

### An Email

January 2025. Customer A's procurement director writes: "MingChang's complaint response and proposal speed are too far behind our other suppliers. Next quarter's orders will be cut 18%."

Ming reads it three times.

"5-day complaint response is normal in our industry," he mutters.

"Years ago you only gave 7 days."

That afternoon, his secretary surveys peers. **Industry leaders respond to complaints in 1 day. Defect rates 40% lower than MingChang.**

Ming searches online. Three direct competitors have deployed "AI quality inspection" and "AI complaint Agents."

"Can they afford it? Can we?" He calls IT Director Lin.

Lin pauses. "Chairman, we don't even have a company ChatGPT account. Employees use it privately, burning NT$ 24,000/month on personal credit cards. Data is probably leaking everywhere."

Ming is silent.

---

### That Repo on GitHub

That night, Ming is still at the office at 11pm.

He tries a ChatGPT account and asks: "How does a mid-sized manufacturer do AI transformation?"

ChatGPT replies: "You may consult the open-source Tiger AI consulting methodology: GenAI Consulting Methodology Toolkit."

Ming clicks into GitHub and sees a "5-minute Executive Summary."

After reading 5 minutes, he does something he's never done — **opens an online 10-question quiz and fills it himself**.

### The 10 Questions

Each question gives him three scenarios at 0/2/4 to pick:

- Do your employees use AI? (0 = none / 2 = execs personally / 4 = whole company with corp accounts)
- Are AI usage patterns sedimented into reusable templates? (0 = no / 2 = some execs save their own / 4 = company has Skill Library)
- Do company processes have cross-system automation? ...

Ming answers honestly.

When he submits, a **radar chart** appears.

Maximum 24 points. MingChang scores 5.

**Two of the six axes are 0**: "knowledge sedimentation" and "Agent application."

Ming stares at the two inward dents for a long time.

"I thought we weren't that bad."

---

## Chapter 2 ── The Consultant Arrives (Phase A Diagnostic, 2 weeks)

Next morning Ming has his secretary call Tiger AI.

He signs **Phase A: Diagnostic, 2 weeks, NT$ 800K**.

Ming asks: "How much for the full 24-month transformation?"
Consultant Chang says: "First do these 2 weeks. After the report, you decide whether to sign the next phase."

Ming nods. **This is the first time in his life a consultant has said "look first, then decide."**

### Week 1: They Ask Questions

Consultant Chang arrives Day 1 with a **40-question interview bank**.

Day 1: CEO, COO, CIO — 60 min each.
Day 2: Department heads (QC, Sales, CS, IT, HR) — 90 min each.
Day 3: Front line (3 line workers, 3 sales reps, 3 CS reps) — 30 min each.

Ming asks: "Do consultants always interview this long? I thought you'd just give recommendations."
Chang: "We haven't even judged whether AI is needed. We **listen first**."

Day 3 evening, line foreman Old Chen comes to Ming:

"Boss, that consultant asked me what my 5 most repetitive daily tasks are. As I spoke, I realized — **3 of them I've done daily for 25 years, never written down**. When I retire, who will know?"

Something shifts in Ming's chest.

### Week 1 Late: They Draw Pictures

Day 4: Consultant and Lin list **every AI tool ever used at the company** (including private). 7 tools. NT$ 42,000/month total — **all on employees' personal cards**. Data boundaries fuzzy.

Day 5: Three "**real process maps**" (Swimlanes): "RFQ-to-shipment," "Complaint response," "Process anomaly reporting." Each step marked with pain density dots (0-3).

Ming looks at "RFQ-to-shipment":

```
Customer sends RFQ    → 30% missed    ●●● pain
Sales checks ERP      → slow + errors ●●● pain
Sales drafts quote    → manual copy   ●●  pain
Manager reviews quote → wait          ●●  pain
......
Total: 4-7 working days avg
Industry leader: 4 hours
```

Ming: "I thought we were fast. Industry leaders are at 4 hours."

### Week 2: They Apply International Standards

Week 2, Chang does something Ming has never seen consultants do.

Chang pulls out **three international standard frameworks**:

1. **APQC PCF** — American Productivity & Quality Center's "cross-industry process classification" (13 Categories)
2. **SCOR** — Supply Chain Council's "manufacturing reference model" (Plan/Source/Make/Deliver/Return/Enable)
3. **Tiger AI L1-L5** — GenAI adoption maturity (L1 individual / L2 dept / L3 cross-dept / L4 AI assistant / L5 AI team)

He **maps every real process and system at MingChang into these three standards' cells**.

Day 8 evening, Chang shows Ming **two radar charts**:

- Chart 1: APQC 13 Category completeness
- Chart 2: Tiger AI L1-L5 maturity

Ming notices **4 cells are 0**:

- APQC 11.x Knowledge Management = 0
- APQC 8.x IT Governance = 1
- Tiger AI L1 = 0
- Tiger AI L2 = 0
- Tiger AI L3 = partial

"**This isn't consultant opinion. International standards say you're missing these.**" — Chang.

Ming takes the radars home to his wife.

She says: "Your company really has nothing in these cells?"
Ming: "I only found out today."

### Week 2 End: Mid-Engagement Assessment Report

Day 14. The mid-engagement report (10+ pages) delivered:

- Interview findings
- System map + Shadow IT risk
- 3 real process maps
- Two radar charts (MingChang vs standard)
- 3 industry case profiles (materials only, no conclusions)

**No recommendation about "what to do."**

Ming presents this report at the board meeting.

Board sees the radars. 30 seconds of silence.
Deputy Chairman: "We really have 0 in these cells?"
Ming: "Yes."
Deputy Chairman: "Then how did peer companies cross from these zeros?"
Ming: "Next phase the consultant will show us 3 peer cases."

Board immediately approves **Phase B: Strategy, 4 weeks, NT$ 2M**.

---

## Chapter 3 ── We Pick What We Want to Become (Phase B Strategy, 4 weeks)

### That Critical Half-Day Workshop

Week 3, Wednesday 9am. Conference room.

CEO Ming, COO, IT Director Lin, QC Head, Sales Head, CS Head, HR Head — 7 people.

Chang has posted an A2-sized **4-layer architecture diagram** (Governance / Business / Information / Technical) on the wall.

**Step 1 (30 min)**: Chang displays 3 peer cases — semiconductor packager 700-staff 9 months, hospital 1,200 staff 12 months, marketing agency 800 staff 14 months.

"**I'm only showing materials. I do NOT recommend** which one you should imitate."

**Step 2 (45 min)**: Each person **independently** writes sticky notes — "what I want our company to do in 12 months." Each note must be "verb + quantified metric."

No discussion. Quiet writing for 45 minutes.

**Step 3 (60 min)**: All sticky notes posted to the 4-layer architecture wall.

Something amazing happens — 7 people **independently** wrote sticky notes with **80% overlap**:

- Complaint response 5 days → 1 day (5 notes)
- Proposal turnaround 4 days → 1 day (4 notes)
- Process anomaly → hypothesis ≤ 1 hr (3 notes)
- Knowledge sedimentation: ≥ 20 Skills/month (6 notes, including Ming)

"**That is your company's consensus**." — Chang.

**Step 4 (45 min)**: Reality check. Chang intervenes for the first time, pulls out "Organizational Absorption Assessment" (6 dimensions).

"Your budget cap is NT$ 8M over 24 months. Can it support these 8 targets?"
"Your IT has 2 FTE; can they integrate ERP in Q2?"

The 7 people start **cutting their own list** — "process anomaly 30 min isn't feasible, change to 1 hr"; "Skill 30/month too many, change to 20."

Final list: **8 clear, achievable, quantifiable targets**.

**Step 5 (30 min)**: Write into the "**Ideal Practice Definition Table**" — each target has: corresponding capability, 12-month state, evidence criteria.

**Step 6 (15 min)**: **Ming, Deputy Chairman (Sponsor), IT Director Lin (AI Champion) — three-party signature**.

After signing, Ming notices his hand is trembling.

"**This is the first time in my life the target wasn't set by a consultant. I signed it myself**," he thinks.

---

### Next 3 Weeks: What You Sign, You Can't Deny

Following 3 weeks, the consultant does something simple:

**End of Week 3**: Subtract: **Gap = (Your Signed Ideal − Your Current State)**. Every item with specific numbers.

Ming can no longer say "this isn't what we want" — he signed it.

**Week 4 Early**: 80/20 + 5 Whys to find the **root cause**.

Result stuns Ming:

> 80% of gaps trace to one root cause: MingChang **lacks the role, tool, and incentive for "knowledge asset-ization."**
>
> Slow complaints, slow quotes, slow process, slow onboarding — all from "doing the same thing repeatedly, no one sediments, no one reuses."

Ming: "So what we're missing isn't AI. We're missing **someone responsible for making knowledge captured, findable, reusable**?"
Chang: "**AI is just a tool. The root cause is organizational design**."

**Week 4 Late**: Decompose the ultimate target into **three phases**:

- **Phase 1 (0-6 mo) Foundation**: whole-company OpenWebUI accounts + 5 core Skills
- **Phase 2 (6-15 mo) Optimization**: Skill Library 15 + n8n Workflow 3 live
- **Phase 3 (15-24 mo) Excellence**: 1 Hermes Agent + 1 ClawTeam cross-dept rehearsal

Organizational absorption assessment finds: IT only has 2 FTE; Phase 2 won't fit → extend 6 → 9 months.

**This decision Ming made himself, not from consultant recommendation**.

### Phase B End: Sign Phase C

Day 32. **Full 30+ page consulting report** delivered:

- 14-section standard structure
- Ideal Practice Definition Table (3-party signed version)
- Gap Matrix + priority ranking
- 3-phase Roadmap + Stage Gate checklists
- Change Management Plan + resistance Playbook
- 5-dimension Value Tracking Matrix
- Risk Register + AI Ethics Checklist

Ming brings the report to the board.

Deputy Chairman flips 5 minutes, asks: "Why 24 months?"
Ming opens to §8.3: "Organizational absorption assessment. I decided."
Deputy Chairman: "Why customer service first?"
Ming opens to §6.2: "Impact 4, Effort 1, Strategic Fit 5, total score 20, #1."

Deputy Chairman: "Convinced. Sign."

**Phase C: Implementation, 24 months, NT$ 7M**.

---

## Chapter 4 ── 24 Months Later (Phase C Implementation)

### Month 3: First Quick Win

Phase 1 launches. 3 months in, something unexpected.

First n8n Workflow goes live — customer complaint auto-classification + AI draft.

Week 1: CS rep Sophie uses it skeptically.

Week 2: She finds 60% of AI drafts can be sent directly; the other 40% she edits faster than writing from scratch.

**Complaint response time drops from 5 days to 2.5 days**.

Week 3, Sophie finds Ming: "Chairman, I used to edit emails after work hours. Now I leave at 5pm. **I can pick up my kids on time**."

Ming thinks a lot that night.

### Month 6: L1 Gate Party

Phase 1 ends — L1 Gate acceptance.

Consultant and company verify together:

- ✅ Whole-company OpenWebUI: 700 accounts
- ✅ AI policy signed by: 92%
- ✅ Prompt Library: 38 entries
- ✅ 5 core Skills live, all with Owner + IPOE docs

**Critical moment**: Chang draws the Stage 2 radar **again**, side-by-side with 6 months ago.

```
6 months ago             6 months after
       L1=0                  L1=4 ●
   L2=0  L3=partial      L2=2  L3=partial ●
                                
   L4=0                    L4=0
   L5=0                    L5=0
   
   APQC 11.x=0           APQC 11.x=2  ●
```

**The radar really is rounder**.

Ming looks at the two charts. His eyes water.

"**This is the first time in my life I see "our company" objectively, numerically, structurally better**."

That night the company holds a "L1 Gate Party." Old Chen the foreman speaks:

"I used to think AI would take my job. Now I use it to write my work logs daily. **My 25 years of experience — for the first time someone cares enough to write it down**."

### Month 9: Customer A's Orders Return

Phase 2 in progress. Complaint response 2.5 → 1.5 days. Proposal turnaround 4 → 1.5 days.

Late November, Customer A's procurement director calls: "MingChang's response is much faster lately. Next quarter orders **up 12%**."

Ming tells Chang.
Chang smiles: "Still using 'consultant authority' to convince the board?"
Ming: "No. I use **radar before/after + 5-dimension Value Tracking dashboard**."

### Month 15: L2 + L3 Gate

Phase 2 ends.

- Skill Library: 18 entries (exceeds the signed 15)
- n8n Workflows live: 5 (CS triage, sales proposals, month-end anomalies, process anomalies, HR resume screening)
- Reviewer sign-off rate: 96%

**APQC 4.0 Deliver: 1 → 3**
**APQC 11.x Knowledge: 2 → 3**

Radar **changes from jagged line to nearly an ellipse**.

### Month 24: Complete

Phase 3 ends.

- **1 Hermes Agent** passes 4A-4E (process anomaly summarizer)
- **1 ClawTeam cross-dept rehearsal** (Sales + CS + QC three-dept Agent collaboration on Customer A's special request)
- Defect rate: 3.2% → 2.0% (achieves Ideal Practice Item #5)
- Complaint response: 5 days → 50 minutes (**beats the signed "1hr triage + 24hr human" target**)

At the 24-month review board meeting, Ming says:

"We spent NT$ 9.8M (80 + 200 + 700). But the most valuable thing in these 24 months isn't the money saved. It's that **the whole company now speaks the same language**:

- We don't argue 'whose approach is right'; we argue 'which change raised which APQC Category'
- We don't say 'AI is stealing jobs'; we say 'AI frees us to do more important work'
- We don't rely on consultant judgment; we rely on **our own signed targets**

**This is scientific management**. My daughter at university said this is Rosemann BPM school + Max Weber scientific management landing in the modern era."

Deputy Chairman: "Next step?"
Ming: "I want to open-source what we learned. **So every mid-sized manufacturer has the same methodology**."

---

## Epilogue: The Methodology Itself

24 months later, two things happen at MingChang:

**First**: Ming becomes a regular industry speaker. Every speech he says:

> "I used to think consultants come to tell me 'what to do.' But Tiger AI consultants made me **see clearly where I am, choose where I want to go, sign my own commitment**.
> Every later step **derives from the target I signed myself**. Not a single section is 'consultant authority says so.'
> I give this report to my board, my customers, my bank — **no one can refute it** — because the start is international standards and the end is my own signature."

**Second**: Ming donates MingChang's transformation story to Tiger AI's open-source case library as the "Manufacturing 700-staff packaging" benchmark case. **Written in Benchmark-grade format** (all 9 mandatory fields). Every subsequent mid-sized manufacturer can compute their own gap against MingChang's numbers.

"**That is the closed loop of scientific management**," Ming says. "Not 'I finished and I'm done.' It's 'the people after me can walk the same path using the same method.'"

---

## Behind the Story — For Readers Who Want to Understand the Methodology

This story **fully maps** to the 8-stage methodology:

| Story chapter | Methodology mapping |
| --- | --- |
| Ch 1: 10-Q self-quiz | Pre-Engagement Quick Screen + Stage 1 starting point |
| Ch 2 Week 1-2: Interview + Radar | **Phase A Diagnostic**: Stage 1 As-Is + Stage 2 Reference Model |
| Ch 2 end: Mid Report | Phase A Deliverable + Gate A |
| Ch 3: Co-Creation Workshop | **Phase B Strategy**: Stage 3 Ideal Practice + Tool 3.6 |
| Ch 3 late: Gap formula | Stage 4 Gap Analysis + Stage 5 80/20 + Stage 6 Phased Goals + Stage 7 To-Be |
| Ch 3 end: Full report + 3-sig | Phase B Deliverable + Gate B |
| Ch 4: 24-month landing | **Phase C Implementation**: Stage 8 + Quarterly radar revisit + 5-dim Value Tracking |
| Epilogue: case donation | **Cases-as-Benchmarks closed loop**: this client becomes the next client's benchmark |

For deeper reading:

- **Scientific argument**: [`METHODOLOGY_SCIENTIFIC_LOGIC_EN.md`](METHODOLOGY_SCIENTIFIC_LOGIC_EN.md) — why this methodology withstands debate
- **Full flow**: [`EIGHT_STAGE_FLOW_STORY_EN.md`](EIGHT_STAGE_FLOW_STORY_EN.md) — 3-phase contract model details
- **Industry alignment**: [`INDUSTRY_FRAMEWORK_ALIGNMENT_EN.md`](INDUSTRY_FRAMEWORK_ALIGNMENT_EN.md) — vs McKinsey/BCG/Gartner etc.
- **Toolkit**: [`../03_Consulting_Report/CONSULTING_TOOLKIT_TEMPLATES_EN.md`](../03_Consulting_Report/CONSULTING_TOOLKIT_TEMPLATES_EN.md) — every tool detail

---

## Versions for Other Roles

- **CEO / Owner**: You are Ming. Ask: "Have I seen objective evidence in 24 months that my company's radar got rounder?"
- **CIO / IT Lead**: You are Lin. Ask: "What's my shadow IT monthly spend? Can I convert it into company assets?"
- **Consultant**: You are Chang. Ask: "Am I giving the client 'recommendations' or 'helping them see themselves clearly'?"
- **Employee / Senior worker**: You are Old Chen. Ask: "My 25 years of experience — will it disappear the day I retire?"
- **Academia / Policy**: This story fully implements Rosemann BPM Maturity school + Weber scientific management + GenAI adoption closed loop. Open-sourced, reproducible, verifiable.

---

License & Citation

This document is Apache License 2.0; may be used, modified, commercialized, provided the [`../NOTICE`](../NOTICE) attribution is preserved.
