Supply Chain & Logistics
Great supply chains demand clear strategy and disciplined execution. We help you build both.
At Cade Operations Consulting, we believe supply chain and logistics performance is a core driver of growth, resilience, and customer experience. As networks scale and complexity increases, even well-designed systems can break down without clear planning, decision-making, and operating discipline.
Our supply chain and logistics work is practical and execution-focused. We partner with leaders to design, stabilize, and scale end-to-end networks — connecting strategy to planning models and frontline execution so teams can make better tradeoffs, reduce volatility, and perform under pressure.
We help you build leaders who:
Balance cost, service, and scalability across the network
Improve planning accuracy and decision speed
Reduce variability across fulfillment, transportation, and last mile
Create clear ownership and accountability across functions and partners
Perform reliably through Peak, growth, and change
Success Stories
Every supply chain is different, but the challenges are often familiar. These examples show how we partner with leaders to navigate scale, complexity, and disruption - translating strategy into reliable execution and measurable operational impact.
Scaling a Parcel Network Without Breaking Operations
Build a network that can scale with growth, without breaking operations or margin.
A growth-stage parcel carrier was expanding quickly and needed a clear view of how future demand would flow through its network over the coming years. We partnered with the client to forecast demand using customer profiles, geographic coverage, and population density, then modeled how increasing volume and destination complexity would impact sortation hubs across the network. This work informed a phased automation strategy that balanced cost, capability, and operational resilience, supported by collaboration with automation vendors and integrators.
Impact:
Approved and phased automation roadmap across multiple hub facilities
Doubled labor efficiency by automating the most cognitively intensive sortation tasks
Improved network resilience by aligning automation decisions across upstream and downstream hubs
Optimizing Lane Strategy to Unlock Network Value
Make deliberate speed–cost tradeoffs that maximize customer value within real network constraints.
A growing eCommerce business was evaluating how to balance lane consolidation with faster delivery as its network expanded. While consolidation supported cost efficiency, additional facility touches increased transit time and pressure on capacity. We partnered with the client to build a lane-level decision model that combined short- and mid-term forecasts with speed, cost, and conversion sensitivity. The model identified when direct lanes created incremental customer value and when consolidation remained the right choice, while accounting for day-to-day volume variability to ensure decisions held under real operating conditions.
Impact:
Clear lane-level decision framework balancing speed, cost, and conversion value
Improved utilization of the existing network by reducing unnecessary facility touches
Greater confidence in direct-versus-consolidated lane decisions without increasing cost or capacity risk
Breaking the Peak Labor Whiplash in Last Mile Delivery
Control Peak capacity without carrying excess labor when demand falls.
A national last-mile delivery network was navigating the challenge of aligning labor capacity with highly variable peak and off-peak demand. We partnered with the client to develop a more flexible labor planning methodology that differentiated drivers by work patterns and tenure, and introduced mechanisms to strategically use overtime during peak periods. This approach increased short-term hourly costs, but reduced overall labor expense by limiting new-hire training, improving performance through experienced drivers, and reducing excess labor after peak demand subsided.
Impact:
Reduced peak-season driver labor costs by over 20%
Improved delivery performance by shifting volume toward tenured drivers
Created clearer, repeatable levers to manage last-mile capacity across peaks and troughs
How We Partner
Supply chain and logistics work best when strategy is tightly connected to how the network actually operates. At Cade Operations Consulting, we partner directly with leaders to translate strategy into transparent models and decision frameworks that represent real-world conditions.
Our work is hands-on, practical, and tailored to the organization and its network. We help teams clarify priorities, make better tradeoffs across cost, service, and capacity, and build operating rhythms that reduce volatility and improve predictability.
If you’re looking to strengthen supply chain performance while scaling with confidence, we’d welcome a conversation. Share a few details below and we’ll be in touch shortly.