Establishing the right approach to, and controls over distribution capabilities is critical. SCT’s experience in managing distribution operations and the design of supply chain networks, facilities, automation, and warehousing processes, and systems, SCT brings clarity, structure, and confidence to complex supply chain decisions. Our value comes from deep industry and operational expertise, including:
- Our understanding of how processes, labor, automation, and technology come together to drive performance.
- Our recognition of the benefits of leveraging partners for less critical or asset intensive operations, and our awareness of the ecosystem of providers across the technology, services, and operations landscape.
- Our ability to guide clients through every phase of a transformation. Whether the path forward requires designing a greenfield facility, modernizing an existing site with advanced automation, implementing new warehouse systems, selecting and onboarding an outsourcing partner, or managing the transition to a new operating model.
At SCT, we provide an integrated approach that reduces risk and accelerates results. By combining strategic planning with hands-on program leadership, it enables clients to move from vision to execution with a cohesive roadmap, disciplined governance, and a proven methodology that ensures sustainable, long-term impact.
Regardless of where your organization is in your journey, SCT brings depth of perspective and a pragmatic approach to advancing the value of your supply chain.
Our approach begins by examining strategic opportunities that can reshape the supply chain for long-term advantage. This includes evaluating vertical integration possibilities, revenue-generation levers, and opportunities for competitive differentiation. In today’s omni-channel fulfillment environment, channel strategies and their associated service level requirements and cost structures must be analyzed to understand whether product categories or channels warrant distinct inventory management approaches. Across the end to end supply chain, supplier- and customer- roles should also be considered for scale and efficiency packaging services, VMI models, and the balance between DSD and distribution-based replenishment often offer opportunities for improved cost management and scale across the value chain, ensuring the future vision aligns with commercial and operational needs.
With strategic direction defined, the next step is to establish standardized templates for warehouse operations that reflect leading practices in efficiency, capacity, automation, and order-processing performance. These templates serve as structured inputs for modeling and scenario design, even if they are not intended for literal implementation. In parallel, market based cost drivers are collected to enable the evaluation of labor conditions, real estate and energy costs, equipment purchase and installation costs, etc across modeling scenarios.
The third phase uses the operational templates and cost frameworks to model the full end-to-end network. Existing facilities, potential automation retrofits, greenfield opportunities, co-packing needs, and warehousing options including in-house, dedicated 3PL, and public solutions are evaluated through comparative scenarios. Labor assumptions, local wage rates, infrastructure investment, energy consumption, maintenance, and transportation costs are incorporated to quantify trade-offs and identify the cost benefit of potential network improvements so that they can be prioritized and sequenced.
For more information on SCT’s modeling capabilities, see here…
Once the preferred network design is established, an operating strategy is developed to determine how each facility will be managed. This includes decisions around whether operations should be insourced, outsourced entirely, split across multiple 3PL partners, supported with public warehousing, etc. Technology requirements are assessed in parallel to ensure WMS, order management, integration capabilities, analytics platforms, and automation systems align with the chosen operating model.
The next step translates the future-state design and operating strategy into an actionable roadmap. This includes sequencing facility transitions, system implementations, data readiness activities, automation deployments, integration workstreams, and organizational change initiatives. The roadmap becomes the unified plan that aligns leadership, operations, IT, and third-party partners around the timeline, dependencies, risks, and investment profile required to execute the strategy.
Additional efforts around maintenance strategies, organizational impact assessments, staffing plans, and budgetary impacts clarifies the overall impacts to the organization while helping to formalize the critical success factors.
With the roadmap defined, formal sourcing is conducted to secure the partners and capabilities needed for the future network. RFPs are used to evaluate and select 3PLs, facility operators, and supporting service providers. Contracting strategies are assessed to determine the best commercial model such as transactional arrangements, cost-plus structures, and gain-share agreements based on risk tolerance, performance expectations, and relationship objectives.
The final phase focuses on building the performance framework required to manage the network long-term. Network-wide KPIs, operational scorecards, and analytic tools are established to monitor service, cost, labor productivity, automation effectiveness, and continuous improvement opportunities across all facilities and partners. This ensures the transformed network operates with transparency and accountability while enabling ongoing optimization.
Throughout a strategic transformation of distribution capabilities, SCT’s advisors integrate with your project teams to help extend conversations related to warehousing project design and its successful delivery. Embedding ourselves into regular conversations with program stakeholders provides a third-party view of progress and a supportive yet challenging voice seeking to provide optimal impacts and value realized from of your warehousing solutions, while minimizing the disruptions that might result in the process. Participating in or leading steering committee meetings provides a third party view free from internal politics on the readiness for system cutovers as well as the ability of the solution to achieve value.
