- FLOW-FELD / STATUS:FLOWING
- MEASURING MODE:ACTIVE
- BOTTLENECK:DETECTED
Flowrefy is an instrument and a method for measuring business processes. You model your workflow, simulate it hundreds of times and see which step actually slows you down — priced in euros, as a range rather than a claim.
FLOWREFY isn't a name. It's the method.
↻ One cycle per process. The bottleneck moves — which is why it starts again at F.
Eight steps, two halves. FLOW measures, REFY refines. Reverse the order and you buy software against a problem you haven't identified.
Measure first
Four steps until a number is on the table. Nothing is changed here — things are understood.
Find — collect the candidates
Where does work pile up, where is data retyped by hand, where do people complain? The result is a list of processes worth looking at. No verdict yet — just the candidates.
A list, not a judgement
Lay bare — price the current state
Each candidate gets a figure: what it costs today, per year, as a range rather than false precision. Only then are the candidates comparable at all.
If it can't be stated in euros, we don't touch it
Observe — find the real bottleneck under stress
The process runs hundreds of times in a Monte Carlo simulation. Now it shows which step actually blocks — and that is rarely the one people complain about loudest. This is where it is decided which single bottleneck counts.
The one step with no free calculator — that is what FlowVisual is for
Weigh — decide whether the fix is worth it
The lever is costed against its return. Sometimes the answer is that nothing is worth doing — and we say so before you buy anything.
“Doing nothing” is a result too
Then refine
Four steps until the improvement is proven. Only now is anything touched — and only what the measurement named.
Reduce — strip the ballast
Duplicate work, media breaks and waiting loops go first. That costs no licence and works immediately. Automate chaos and you get faster chaos.
Clean-up comes before software
Enable — make ownership explicit
Who decides, who executes, who is merely informed? Most bottlenecks are not capacity problems but unclear responsibility.
One decision, one person
Fit — exactly one lever, cleanly wired
Only now is technology touched: exactly one lever, connecting systems rather than replacing them. Excel stays Excel, SAP stays SAP.
One lever per cycle. Not three.
Yield — prove the return
The same measurement runs again. The result is a before-and-after in euros — and an honest answer about where the bottleneck has moved to.
Fixed price · remote · re-measured
A process is not a sum.
Step O says we simulate. Here is what that means — and why a spreadsheet cannot do it. Same process, four situations: watch the bottleneck move, and watch whether a person or a system is the limit.
Your bottleneck is not a property of the process. It is a property of the situation.
The same five steps, four situations. One run draws one duration per step — one possible day. Five hundred runs make a distribution. Switch the situation and watch the bottleneck move.
An ordinary month. Nothing unusual happens — which is exactly what every process is designed for.
- Auftrag erfassen—
- Technische Prüfung—
- Material / Lieferant—
- Freigabe—
- Versand—
3 h 03 min
The figure everyone calculates.
—
—
This gap is where deadlines break.
- Auftrag erfassen0 %
- Technische Prüfung0 %
- Material / Lieferant0 %
- Freigabe0 %
- Versand0 %
Three worked processes — not client projects, but constructed sample analyses. They show which questions a measurement answers and what a finding looks like. In one of them we advise against buying.
- AN-2026-03Sample
The analysis where we would have advised doing nothing
A distributor wanted to automate complaint handling. The measurement shows the money would have been burnt: the bottleneck sits outside the company.
- Bottleneck
- 74 %
- Cost/year
- €61,000
- AN-2026-02Sample
The invoice sitting in the site manager's car
A construction firm loses early-payment discounts — not for lack of cash, but because approval travels the country on paper.
- Bottleneck
- 71 %
- Cost/year
- €29,000
- AN-2026-01Sample
The quotation process that stalls in engineering
A supplier loses four days in its quotation process — not in costing, but in the queries forced by an incomplete request.
- Bottleneck
- 62 %
- Cost/year
- €41,000
The diagnosis. Free, no strings.
No login · No sales call · Immediate
Five calculators, one result: a reasoned hypothesis about which process costs you most. Not a consulting deliverable — a calculation from your own inputs, on screen immediately.
Bottleneck Diagnosis
Seven questions lead to a reasoned suspicion: which process most likely slows you down. A hypothesis from your inputs — measuring it comes later.
Start diagnosisProcess Cost Analyzer
What a process costs you today, per year — calculated from your inputs, as a range rather than to the cent.
Calculate costsDigitalization Maturity
Where your processes stand today, across five dimensions. A baseline the improvement can later be measured against.
Start assessmentAutomation Check
Whether automation pays off for this process — and whether it doesn't. “No” is a valid result.
Check potentialMake-vs-Buy Decision
Build or buy? Calculated with TCO and risk, not with gut feeling.
Start decision helperFor O there is no calculator.
The five tools cover F, L and W — candidates, current cost, worth it or not. They estimate. What they cannot do is simulate: which step actually blocks. That is step O, and that is what FlowVisual is for.
See FlowVisualThe instrument. On your machine.
Version 1.0 · macOS & Windows
FlowVisual is the FLOWREFY method as software. You assemble your process from building blocks, run it hundreds of times in a Monte Carlo stress test and get the same evaluation you see in the archive — bottleneck, role utilisation, media breaks, cost in euros.
- 01
Draw
Click your process together from steps, decisions and sub-processes — no BPMN degree required.
- 02
Test
A Monte-Carlo stress test exposes the bottleneck: utilization, cycle time and probabilities instead of gut feeling.
- 03
Make it fit
See media breaks and automation potential in euros, and export the before-and-after as a branded PDF.
Runs locally · no cloud · free for 14 days
How we work — and what we leave out to do it.
Three sentences you can hold us to. They cost us business, and that is deliberate.
References prove nothing.
That something worked at another company says nothing about your process. So we don't advertise with other people's mandates and we won't put logos in front of you. Your process gets measured from scratch — it is its own problem, not a repeat.
Stay because you want to, not because you must.
We build nothing you cannot run without us. No lock-in, no dependence on systems only we understand. If you leave, it keeps running. If you stay, it is because it pays off — not because you are stuck.
No result, no next step.
If the measurement shows no worthwhile lever, we say so and stop — instead of selling you the next phase. One of our published analyses advises against buying for exactly that reason. “Doing nothing” is a result too.
Questions you probably have
The calculators on this site are free. They are tools, not consulting — you run them yourself and the number is yours. Our work costs money. How much depends on the scope: one process, one department, or the whole company. We assemble the modules that scope needs and put a fixed price on it — not a day rate. It holds for the agreed scope and for a stated period; if the scope grows, we say so beforehand and not on the invoice. We start against a deposit.
The diagnosis calculates immediately: your most expensive bottleneck, in euros. The sprint takes 3–5 weeks and changes exactly one thing. Afterwards we run the same calculation again — same formula, new numbers.
No. Excel stays Excel, SAP stays SAP. We connect what is already there. A system change is a separate decision with its own budget — if one is due, we will say so. It is not part of the sprint.
Before we start, the proposal states what each module is meant to achieve: a number, how it is measured, when it is measured. We both sign that — so there is nothing left to interpret afterwards. If we miss the target, we do not invoice the remainder; the deposit stays, it covers the work that was done. And if we see no worthwhile lever beforehand, we say so and decline.
Yes. You run the diagnosis yourself, online. We deliver the sprint remotely. We come on site when the process lives at the workbench rather than the screen.
The method on a single page.
What we measure, what an analysis returns, what it costs — and when we advise against it. One sheet, made to be passed to whoever decides.
If you want to know what your process costs: measure it.
Start with the free diagnosis or download FlowVisual. If you want to speak to someone afterwards, we're reachable.
Remote · fixed price · result in euros