Anything longer gets skimmed. Anything shorter gets questioned. Five blocks, in this order.
1. The number
What the asset gives away per year in contribution margin. One figure, at the top, before any explanation at all.
This is the block people get wrong most often, because the instinct is to build to the number. Set the context, explain the method, walk through the analysis, reveal the total. That structure works in a presentation you are delivering and fails completely on a page someone reads alone at their desk.
Executives read top down and stop when they have what they need. Give them the figure first and everything after it is supporting material they can choose to read.
2. The evidence
How it was counted, over what period, and by whom. Two sentences.
Two weeks of direct observation on the case packer, covering eleven changeovers and four product runs, counted by the operating crew and reconciled against a design rate calculation.
That is what stops the challenge. Not because it is long, but because it demonstrates that the number was produced by a method rather than asserted.
3. The action
Your top ranked recovery action, its cost, and its cost per hour recovered, stated against the alternative.
$145,000 to recover 279 constraint hours, at $520 per hour recovered. The equivalent capacity purchased as new equipment costs approximately $17,000 per hour.
That comparison is the entire argument, and it fits in two lines.
4. The return
Hours recovered, margin recovered, EBITDA effect, and capital avoided where a competing capital request genuinely exists.
For our line, at full program scope: 700 hours, $4.2mm of contribution margin, $380,000 program cost including the hold, $3.8mm net annual EBITDA effect, $12mm capital request deferred.
Then one further line, which is the one that changes who is in the room for the next conversation.
At an 8x multiple, $3.8mm of recurring EBITDA is roughly $30.4mm of enterprise value.
Use your own multiple if you know it. Use capital avoidance only where a real competing request exists, because claiming it speculatively is the kind of thing that gets the whole page discounted. But when both are true, that sentence moves the discussion from a plant conversation to a board conversation, and it does so without a single new fact.
5. The proof
Owner, date, and the specific line of the specific report where the result will appear.
This block is why the next request gets funded. It commits you to something checkable, which is uncomfortable and which is exactly what makes the page credible. Anyone can promise a result. Very few people specify in advance where it will be visible and when.
Why the short version is harder to say no to
A five-block page is specific, accountable, and easy to refuse. That sounds like a weakness and it is the opposite.
Vagueness is what people reach for when they are afraid of rejection, and committees recognize it instantly. A proposal that could not fail because it never committed to anything also cannot succeed, and it does not get funded.
Be refusable. It is the most persuasive thing on the page.
