Supply chain consultants who design and deliver the change.

What our supply chain consulting covers

• Network and footprint design: warehouse, production and distribution locations modelled to demand
• Inventory strategy: service-level driven stock policy, ABC and safety stock
• Logistics and freight: carrier benchmarking, mode selection, lane optimisation
• S&OP and demand planning: the operating rhythm that keeps everything else honest
• Supplier resilience: dual-sourcing, nearshoring and continuity planning

How our supply chain consultants work

Every engagement starts with a diagnostic: two to three weeks of data, interviews and quick modelling to size the opportunity. From there we scope discrete workstreams, each with a clear commercial target and an owner.

Typical outcomes

• Lower logistics cost
• Lower inventory with equal or better availability
• Warehousing cost aligned to current volumes, not historical peaks
• Shorter, more reliable lead times on critical categories

Supply chain cost reduction: where the money usually is

When we run a supply chain cost reduction programme for a UK business, the savings almost always cluster in the same places: freight rates that have drifted above market, inventory carried against demand patterns that no longer exist, and warehouse footprints sized for a peak that never repeated. Sequencing matters: we go after the fastest-payback wave first, then reinvest capacity into structural work.

A seven-step supply chain cost reduction plan

• 1. Build a cost-to-serve baseline by channel and SKU so every subsequent decision is priced, not guessed.
• 2. Benchmark and re-tender freight, parcel, pallet and full-load, against the current market. Fastest cash in the programme.
• 3. Right-size inventory by SKU against real service-level targets. Retire zombie SKUs and shrink safety stock on the tail to release working capital.
• 4. Rationalise the warehouse footprint where volumes have shifted well away from the design point: consolidate sub-scale DCs or renegotiate 3PL rate cards.
• 5. Redesign inbound flows: consolidate lanes, revisit incoterms, negotiate MOQ and packaging with suppliers to strip hidden cost out of landed price.
• 6. Fix S&OP and forecast accuracy to reduce expedite freight, obsolete stock write-offs and firefighting cost: the expensive symptoms of a chain that can't see two months out.
• 7. Govern the savings with a monthly rhythm tracking rates, service and inventory, or the gains decay over time.

Supply chain review

A Caventis supply chain review is a two to three week diagnostic. It covers cost-to-serve by channel and SKU, carrier benchmarking, inventory health, supplier concentration and network fit, and outputs a prioritised initiative list with sizing, effort and payback. It is designed to be actionable, not a shelf-ware report.

Sectors

• Manufacturing and industrial
• Consumer goods, retail and e-commerce
• Distribution and wholesale
• Healthcare and life sciences

For related reading, see how we consolidate fragmented supplier bases without concentrating risk and our approach to building supply chain resilience without carrying excess inventory.

Cost analysis underpins most supply chain decisions we make. We break the price into materials, labour, overhead and margin so the negotiation is about cost drivers, not goodwill. See how we build a should-cost model.

Frequently asked questions