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SMZone

Most models get cut. We ship the one that runs.

We build forecasting, routing and classification systems on your operational data, then run them in production behind the tools your team already use. Deployment is the deliverable, not the demo.

  • Tall steel racking in a distribution warehouse02
  • Analogue control desk lined with dials and meters03
  • Gantry cranes lit against a night sky at a container terminal04

Six approaches. One survives contact with your data.

01The cut

The hard part

The hard part was never the model.

A disused control room, its instrument panels still wired

A forecast that is four percent more accurate is worth nothing until something downstream changes because of it.

Most of the work in an AI project is not the model. It is the plumbing around it: getting to the data, agreeing what a row means, deciding who is accountable when the system is wrong, and wiring the output into the tool where someone actually makes the decision.

That work is unglamorous, and it is where projects die. Teams ship a convincing prototype, present it, then discover the warehouse table it depended on is rebuilt nightly by a script nobody owns. We start from the other end: the decision first, then backwards to the data, and we build only what the decision needs.

We would rather ship a blunt model that runs every day than a precise one that runs once.

02The bench

6–12 weeks

Three phases. Six to twelve weeks.

Every engagement runs the same strip. Some stop at the first frame, and that is a good outcome.

  1. Lane markings painted across a freight yard01

    Instrument

    We map one decision end to end — who makes it, how often, on what evidence, and what it costs when it is wrong. Then we find out whether the data to support it actually exists.

    Weeks 1–2Marked in

  2. Steel racking running the length of a distribution centre02

    Model

    We build the smallest system that beats the current process, measured against the decision itself rather than a held-out test set. Gradient-boosted trees more often than transformers. We tell you which and why.

    Weeks 3–7On the bench

  3. Port cranes reflected in still water at night03

    Operate

    The system goes behind your existing interface — the CRM, the dispatch board, the ledger — with monitoring, versioned decisions and a rollback path. Your team runs it. We hand over the code and the runbook.

    Weeks 8–12Taped — in production

03The panel

eu-west-1

Every system you run, and what it is doing right now.

Each deployed system reports its own health. Input drift, decision volume, latency at the ninety-fifth percentile, and the model version behind each decision. State is a mark, not a colour — a drifting system gets struck, not tinted.

Taped — running in production
Struck — drifting, pulled for rework
On a pin, deferred
On a pin — built, not yet committed

smzone / production

eu-west-1

SystemsRunsDriftTrims
Deployed systems and their current state, with synthetic example data.
SystemDriftp95Decisions / 30dMark
Demand forecastfx-demand-040.0231ms1.24MTaped, in production
Route assignmentrt-dispatch-110.0584ms402KTaped, in production
Ticket triagecl-intake-020.3152ms918K
Ledger anomaliesan-ledger-070.0119ms77KTaped, in production
Contract extractionex-contract-01On a pin, deferred
Synthetic data, shown for illustration.

04The strip

Drag or scroll

What we build.

05The bin

Declined

What we hang on a pin.

Nothing is deleted at a bench — it hangs where you can reach it. These are the jobs we routinely set aside, and why.

  • A chatbot on your website

    Rarely tied to a decision that costs money. If it is, say which one and we will look again.

  • A model with no owner

    If nobody on your side is accountable for the output, it will not survive its first bad week.

  • Anything built on a table nobody owns

    We will find this in week one and tell you before you spend the rest of the budget.

  • Replacing a team

    We build systems that make a decision faster or more consistent. Headcount is your call, not our pitch.

06Note

What a client said

They spent the first two weeks telling us our data could not support the thing we asked for, then built the thing it could support. It has run every morning since March.

Head of Operations, European logistics group

Tell us about one decision.

Not a roadmap. One decision your team makes often, and what it costs when it goes wrong.

Start a pilot