David Carneal

David Carneal

David Carneal is the Principal and Head Consultant at the Digital Efficiency Consulting Group. With over 20 years in process efficiency, change management and workflow development he has help companies elevate wasted time and grow profitability with ease.

About

David Carneal is the Founder and Principal of Digital Efficiency Consulting Group (DECG), where he helps organizations turn messy operations into systems that actually work. He specializes in process optimization, workflow redesign, and practical digital transformation for small-to-mid-sized businesses across manufacturing, distribution, professional services, and healthcare-adjacent industries.

With a career spanning operations, technology implementation, and business process improvement, Carneal is known for a simple philosophy: small improvements create real change. Rather than pursuing disruptive overhauls that stall out in planning documents, he focuses on identifying friction points inside everyday workflows, quantifying their real business impact, and delivering execution-ready roadmaps that teams can use immediately.

Before founding DECG, Carneal worked closely with executive teams, operations leaders, and frontline staff to diagnose bottlenecks in order management, production flow, customer onboarding, data handling, and cross-department handoffs. This hands-on experience shaped his practical approach. He does not sell theory. He builds clarity, priorities, and momentum.

Carneal is also deeply involved in developing structured consulting methodologies and reusable client tools, including operational assessments, efficiency scorecards, KPI frameworks, and implementation playbooks designed to help organizations sustain improvements long after an engagement ends. His firm’s deliverables emphasize transparency, documentation, and decision-ready insights that leadership teams can trust.

He is based in Southern California and works with clients across the United States.

Focus Areas

  • Skilled Problem Solver
  • Expert in Cost Reduction & Process Improvement
  • Process Management
  • Workflow Modernization
  • Business Process Evaluation
  • Modern Workplace Transformation
  • Operational Bottleneck Assessment

Specialties

Process DevelopmentChange ManagementCollaborative StrategyData Analysis

Latest Posts

Bottlenecks and Approvals: The Slowest Two-Step

Most teams don’t have an execution problem. They have a waiting problem. Work piles up behind one team, one person, or one “special process.” Then approvals show up to finish the job: decisions die in inboxes, and “quick sign-off” becomes a two-week vacation.

The Four Boring Moves That Make Office Automation Actually Work

Automation works when it’s boring: standardize intake, validate inputs, route work to the right owner, and send weird cases to an exception queue. Here’s a simple way to spot and pilot a workflow that won’t turn your team into bot babysitters.

Ownership Leaks: When “Shared” Means “Nobody”

“Shared ownership” sounds collaborative. In practice, it often means work ricochets between teams until the deadline shows up and somebody takes an emergency bite out of it. Ownership leaks are expensive because they create invisible delays.

IBM’s 1990s Wake-Up Call: When Efficiency Wasn’t Optional

IBM didn’t survive the early 1990s by holding more meetings or printing a prettier strategy deck. It survived by confronting ugly numbers, cutting through internal drag, and re-engineering how work actually flowed. This article breaks down the stakes IBM faced, the efficiency moves that mattered, and the hard operational questions most companies avoid. If your business is stuck in “busy” mode, this is your wake-up call, minus the multi-billion-dollar loss.

Big Plans Don’t Fail. Friction Wins.

Most strategies don’t fail in a dramatic explosion. They fail the way a shopping cart fails: one wobbly wheel, a squeaky hinge, and suddenly you’re steering with your whole body. If you’re a department leader, you’ve seen it.

All Posts by David Carneal

Creativity Before Tech: The Real Start of Digital Efficiency

Digital efficiency starts with people, not purchases. This post shows how to use three simple questions to surface friction, convert complaints into small experiments, and measure quick wins. It includes a practical self-audit and a micro-experiment scorecard you can use immediately.

Making Digital Efficiency Work for You: Simple Tips That Spark Real Change

Digital efficiency isn’t reserved for giant tech teams. It’s a practical way to reduce waste in how work gets done by improving processes, automating repetitive tasks, and using better visibility into day-to-day operations. The biggest unlock is cultural: give people permission to ask better questions, share ideas, and test small improvements that stack into real change.

Bad Data can be Like Trying to Drive With a Foggy Windshield

Bad data is rarely a technical mystery, it’s usually a decision problem wearing a data costume. This article shows why KPI trust breaks (definitions, timing, identity), what a trust-first approach looks like, and how to build a data “supply chain” that produces reliable dashboards and forecasts. Includes a practical road map and a 2-week starter plan to surface where your numbers are getting distorted.

The Brick that Saved Itself

When LEGO nearly collapsed in the early 2000s, it didn’t save itself with more products, more features, or more meetings. It saved itself by cutting complexity, shrinking the number of unique parts, and selling distractions that weren’t core to the business. The lesson is blunt: complexity is a tax, and someone in operations always ends up paying it. If you want a faster, cleaner operation, the first question isn’t what to add, it’s what to stop doing.

When the Office and the Floor Finally Talk to Each Other

This post focuses on closing the gap between what the office promises and what the floor can actually ship. By surfacing key information on the ticket, defining a clear path for exceptions, and reviewing simple data together each week, you turn the pick ticket into a shared tool instead of a point of friction.

Checklists, Visual Cues, and Fewer Surprises in Shipping

This post looks at how small checklists and simple visual cues can stabilize your shipping process. By making “done” visible at each step, using short, practical checklists, and letting visuals guide the flow, you cut down on last-minute fixes without burying your team in paperwork.

Cutting Picking Errors Without Killing Speed on the Floor

This post focuses on reducing picking errors without crushing speed or morale on the floor. By designing the work so the correct choice is the easy one, adding light-touch checks where mistakes are most costly, and using error data to fix the process instead of blaming people, you protect both your margin and your team.

Start with the Pick Ticket: Mapping a Clean Path from Order to Shipment

This post walks through a simple way to map the real path your pick tickets take from printer to shipment. By following a single order, asking three grounded questions at each step, and sketching a cleaner path with your team, you get a practical roadmap for reducing delays, confusion, and rework without a giant project.

Visibility Drives Accountability — and Motivation

When performance is visible, accountability and energy go up. Instead of waiting for monthly reports, teams can see live dashboards that show how they’re tracking against goals, yesterday’s results, and customer expectations. That shared visibility turns “management’s targets” into our progress — and it naturally encourages ownership, problem-solving, and momentum.

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