Supply Chain Network Design
Where things should be made, stored, and shipped from.
- Typical duration
- 8 to 14 weeks
- Deliverables
- 5 core artifacts
Overview
Network design answers the questions that are expensive to get wrong and awkward to revisit: how many distribution centers you need, where they belong, which plants serve which markets, and what a facility move actually costs once freight, labor, inventory, and service are counted together.
We build a mixed-integer optimization model of your physical network, calibrate it against your actual cost base, and use it to compare scenarios side by side. The output is not a recommendation on a slide. It is a model your team can rerun when volumes shift, a lease comes up, or a tariff lands.
What you get out of it
- A greenfield and brownfield view of the optimal footprint
- Landed cost to serve by customer, product, and lane
- Quantified trade-off curves between cost and service days
- A defensible business case for open, close, resize, and relocate decisions
Capabilities
What the work actually involves.
Baseline modeling
We reconstruct last year of network activity in the model and reconcile it to the general ledger within a few percent. If the baseline does not tie out, no scenario built on it is worth arguing about.
Greenfield analysis
Center of gravity and capacitated facility location runs that ignore your current footprint entirely, so you can see how far the existing network sits from the theoretical optimum.
Scenario and sensitivity design
Structured scenario trees across demand growth, fuel, labor rates, duty regimes, and service commitments, with sensitivity analysis showing which assumptions actually move the answer.
Multi-echelon flow optimization
Plant to DC to customer flow paths, cross-dock and transload options, mode mix, and inbound consolidation solved together rather than one layer at a time.
Capacity and phasing plans
A transition roadmap that sequences moves across quarters, respecting lease expirations, capital availability, and the operational risk of doing too much at once.
Representative work
An engagement of this shape.
Questions
Things people ask first.
- How much data do we need before starting?
- Twelve months of order line history, a facility and lane cost file, and product master data are enough to begin. We spend the first two weeks on data reconciliation regardless, so gaps surface early rather than in week ten.
- Can you work with our existing network tool?
- Yes. We build in commercial network design platforms where you already hold licenses, and in open solvers where you do not, so there is no ongoing software dependency attached to the answer.
Next step
Have a network design question?
Send the decision you are facing. A first conversation is a working session, and it usually clarifies scope more than a proposal would.