EP 582: Maximizing Value with Operational Consulting with Supply Chain Alliance
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The New Warehouse podcast hosted by Kevin Lawton is your source for insights and ideas from the distribution, transportation, and logistics industry. A new episode every Monday morning brings you the latest from industry experts and thought leaders. And now, here's Kevin.

Hey, it's Kevin with the New Warehouse Podcast bringing you a new episode today. And on today's episode, I am going to be joined by Daryl Nelson and he is the principal and practice lead over at Supply Chain Alliance. And we're going to talk a little bit about

Supply Chain Alliance today. What do they do? And we're also going to talk about some of the biggest challenges that Daryl's seeing in the warehousing right now, how to kind of address them and how to engage and work with operational consultants and I guess get value out of them and be able to leverage them to help you grow and address some of those challenges that he's seeing in the market. So Daryl, welcome to the show. How are you?

I am excellent. I am excellent. Thanks for having me on Kevin. I'm glad we were able to find time to do this. It was, when was it? It was early last year. I think we bumped into one another and started having this conversation. So I'm glad we were able to finally, finally get a time into the, you know, the calendar. Yeah, absolutely. Happy to get you on definitely. And, and was very happy to connect with you. Uh,

A little less than a year ago, I would say. I think it was American Supply Chain Summit, I think is where we connected initially. And it's been good to be connected with you since. And, you know, definitely interested in getting your perspective on kind of what's going on in warehousing here in 2025 from you today. But before we kind of dive into that, some of that conversation, why don't you just give us kind of a brief overview of what Supply Chain Alliance is all about?

Sure, absolutely. But before I do that, I would love to just take a minute and thank you for this content that you put out because I've been listening to it for a number of years now. I find it extremely valuable. I think the insights and the perspectives that you're able to curate together within this podcast, I think it's very valuable work for the industry. And I love the fact that you make it available in multiple formats so that I can listen.

watch it on the on my tablet from the comfort of my couch or or hotel room and or through spotify when i'm driving in the car i walk my dog so so thanks for what you do yeah absolutely i definitely i appreciate that and i appreciate you listening for several years now and uh yeah and for anybody listening if this is the first episode you've ever listened to if that's not a good testimony for you to continue there it is

So I appreciate that, Darrell. So yeah, so tell us about Supply Chain Alliance. Yeah, sure. Happy to. So we are Supply Chain Alliance. We're a boutique company.

supply chain consulting firm. We're certainly not a household name like many of our clients are, but we've been working very hard for the past 30 years to develop a very solid reputation within the industry. About a little over four years ago, four and a half years ago, we were acquired by the Metro Supply Chain Group, who for your audience, you may not be familiar with the name, is the number one privately held 3PL operator in Canada, also a sizable operations and growing within the US and the UK.

For Supply Chain Alliance, I would tell you that we started out as a very logistic-centric consulting firm. We developed a great roster of talent and capability in the area of network optimization and DC design, DC operations, improving performance within the four walls of facilities, evaluating material handling solutions and new automation, helping clients outsource and purchase transportation solutions. That's really the backbone

bone of what Supply Chain Alliance was at the onset and continue to be for probably the first 25 years of our existence. I would tell you over the past five years, there's been a much more concentrated effort to move upstream and provide services and develop our capabilities upstream in supply chain, which is where a lot of our customers were asking us to go and where we saw opportunity for us to drive additional value into

to a number of organizations. And so we're hard at work. We continue to build out those capabilities upstream in procurement and planning. Most recently, we launched a product to help clients with their data governance and start building the framework and the foundational capabilities around data to help support some of the ambitions that they have in not only things like AI and blockchain, but also just fully leveraging their WMS and operations within the four walls of their DCs.

Yeah, and I love that. Obviously, you started on the logistics side. I'm a fan of that side. So definitely appreciate that. And, you know, it sounds like all encompassing there to be able to address some of the challenges and things that these companies are facing. So when we look at challenges in a sense, I mean, you know, we're here in 2025, you know, certainly a lot of

things have been going on in the supply chain, especially on the warehousing side, a lot of challenges that people have been going through. But, you know, as you've been working with your clients and continue to work with your clients, I mean, what are some of the biggest challenges that are standing out to you, you know, specifically on the warehousing distribution side of the supply chain that, you know, people are coming to you with?

It's a whole host of things, right? And there isn't one thing that kind of stands out amongst them. I think it's the sheer number of challenges that make operating a DC or warehouse complex today. Through the pandemic, we saw the asking rents spike and they remain historically high. There's ongoing hiring and retention challenges.

Customers are still in the process or warehouse operators are still in the process of rolling out their omnichannel strategies and digitizing their networks. And I think the pace at which technology is changing and evolving puts additional pressure in terms of decision making around where to invest and what types of solutions to bring on board.

We've seen, you know, even within our own customer base, we've seen cybersecurity events take DCs offline over the course of the last couple of years. Certainly seen the strikes at ports and railways and, um, postal services impact the flow of goods and all of those things, uh,

Any one of those things is enough to keep a warehouse operator up at night, but the confluence of all those things hitting either one or a multitude of them, hitting an operation at this point is enough to keep operators up at night. I think the last one that I didn't mention was just the whole notion of new tariffs and the potential for trade wars. That's going to create, not just impacting on DCs, but entire supply chains.

So I think it's a whole confluence of all those things that are really putting additional pressure on warehouse operators today. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a lot of things to be thinking about. And as you mentioned, keeping operators up at night as well, trying to think about what's going to happen. And if this happens, what do I do? And

I react or how do I prepare myself to be able to handle that? So, you know, some of these things that can potentially happen or we've seen happen in the last few years, some of these disruptions, not necessarily, you know, something that internally companies have always dealt with. So it may not have that expertise there. So, I mean, tell us a little bit about, you know, for people maybe that have not engaged

engaged an operational consultant before or have worked with an operational consultant. I mean, how do these operational consultants, I mean, like yourself, how do you help with these types of challenges or how do you help people get ready for these types of challenges? Yeah, I mean, you hit on it there. I mean, I think the other challenge that I didn't name was that, you know, most supply chain organizations and there's a subset of that, most DC operations, I mean, they operate extremely lean today.

Their makeup in terms of skills and capacity and the number of sets of hands that they have on deck, I mean, that's typically calibrated to meet their day-to-day requirements in terms of what that particular facility or organization is intended to do. And so anytime you get outside of the norm, any new project you take on, any new strategy to be developed, new solution to be developed,

That is a prime opportunity to reach out for external help in the form of an operational consultant. As you said, I mean, I think we're very good at bringing expertise and experience for sure. I would tell you, you know, our group, and this would be true for operational consultants.

We're almost entirely practitioner based. So our senior consultants, our engagement managers, certainly our leadership team, we've all come from industry. And so there's a great depth of expertise that comes along with that. We've kind of stood in the shoes of similar roles that our clients hold today. And we've solved similar problems in our prior industry experience.

So external expertise and expert resources is one. I think external perspectives is another opportunity for customers to reach out and look for external help. We work across a whole variety of industries and the thing with supply chain skills and experience, it is very transferable from industry to industry.

And so we offer a great set of resources to help you benchmark, consider, you know, external options or solutions that you may not have considered in your particular operational organization. And then the final area, I think that we provide a lot of value is simply bandwidth. You know, because companies are operating so lean and they've got a set of, typically they've got a set of projects or initiatives that they want to take on and they end up in this

cycle of having to prioritize and kind of push out particular initiatives because they simply don't have the resourcing to take it on. We can be a great resource or source of additional resourcing, both from a senior leadership to kind of expert driven hands-on support to analytical support. We can provide resources across each of those kind of layers of a typical project organization and help get things done. Hmm.

Yeah. Interesting. And I think that it, it oftentimes is that, and I'm curious there too, because, you know, you said something interesting and I think this kind of, I think this resonates throughout our industry, you know, not just from a consultant perspective, but even when you're engaging with a solution provider or somebody in the industry, I mean,

You know, how big of a difference does it make, you know, having somebody that, like you said, has come from the industry to work with you versus...

You know, you see sometimes these consultants are young kids basically that have, you know, you know, very nice education, but, you know, not necessarily like on that on the floor education and not, you know, not to knock them or downplay their education or anything. But, you know, tell us a little bit about, you know, what does that mean and why does that make such a difference, especially in our industry? Because I hear that a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, no, and great question. And I would tell you that I think the difference is pragmatism, right? It's being able to really understand the nature of the issue and fully considering the constraints against an organization and the path at which they're going to need to go down to execute a solution or implement a solution.

I think when you're dealing with experienced resources that have come from industry, they've got that great pragmatism. They're coming from environments that are driven towards measurable results. So there's really nothing academic about it, or we get away from the academic and there's really a focus on actionable results and measurable results. I think those would be the two key things. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a great point there because it is such a different thing. I mean, I remember, um,

Specifically, I had a boss and we had a kid that just joined us first job out of college, joined our team. And he was he was a major in supply chain and logistics. And, you know, my boss was like, oh, whatever they taught you in the book, just forget about it. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. And I don't think, I mean, I don't take anything away from, you know, very smart, young, educated individuals. I mean, we've got members on our team that very strong postgraduate MBA degrees, and they kind of come up through our organization and start as analysts and work their way into consulting roles, but they still represent a very small percentage of

of our resource pool. Most of the people that we're working with today have spent, you know, 10, 15, 20 years working in industry in progressive roles as they've worked their way up through a supply chain organization, either in retail or manufacturing or on the service side, right. And in 3PL or transportation. And so I think the sweet spot is really a combination of the two. And you have a team that has got very experienced senior level resources supported by, I don't want to say a younger crowd, but just to,

a skilled group of analysts who are really good at leveraging tools available today to work through data quickly and pull the insights are experienced and able to pull the insights from that, Dave. I think that's the secret sauce. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I love that, you

you know, kind of evolution there too, you're talking about because it's, you know, it is, they're still getting kind of that exposure to it from, from being an analyst before they're going on to being like the full on consultant. I think that that makes a lot of sense for that progression. So, so, you know, one of the other things that you offer to as well, and from an operational consultant perspective is in the operational assessment, right? So, so tell us a little bit about, you know, what is an operational assessment and,

And what does that involve? And, you know, what can one of your clients expect to get from that at the end of it? Yeah. So as far as assessments are concerned, I know you're asking about operational assessments specifically, and I'll come back around to that. But we offer a variety of assessments. And kind of the first one that I would talk to you about is, I mean, we offer end-to-end supply chain assessments where customers will come to us and ask us to cast a very wide range

across their supply chain organization and evaluate all of the functions and I don't say silos, but all of the disciplines within their supply chain organization. And that would start from their planning through their procurement to their physical network, their DC operations, their final mile transportation to stores and to customers' hands. We'll take a look at

all of the processes that kind of interweave through those different functional areas. We'll look at the systems that tie them together and how they're being leveraged. We'll look at the policies that are applicable in each of those areas. And ultimately, we'll look at the organizational structure and talent that exists within each of those areas, evaluate how those all tie back and support the overall business strategy, as well as how they support the customer SLA or the customer brand promise to the customer, if you will,

So that's a supply chain assessment and we're asked to perform that type of assessment quite often. We can drill down into that and look at one particular area instead of looking across the entire supply chain. So we might look at simply the organizational structure and provide an assessment on that or look at a particular function like procurement and provide an evaluation on the organization's procurement processes.

The assessment that you're referencing, an operational assessment, is we can conduct that type of assessment against any logistics facility, really. It could be a DC or a flow-through site or a transload facility. Really what the client is asking us to do is to come in, establish a baseline of that operation, perform a gap analysis and identify where there's areas of opportunities, where there's constraints, and ultimately bring forward a vision for that site in the future and a set of recommendations.

along with a roadmap to kind of guide the high level implementation in order to get to that future state, along with all of the supporting rationale, pros and cons and cost benefit analysis of each of those recommendations that we're bringing forward. Typically an engagement like that, it depends on the complexity and scale of the operation, but typically that rolls out over eight to 12 weeks. We'll deploy a small team that's made up of operational expertise and analytical support, usually two or three people.

First, we'll kick off with the client after we've scoped that particular work, and we'll make sure our team gets introduced to everybody, all of the key stakeholders that will be involved on the client side, and make sure everybody's aligned in terms of our scope, the objectives of the initiatives, our deliverables, the timelines that we're working against, to make sure everybody's got a comfort level on who these external resources are and why they're here and why are they asking me so many questions and what's the ultimate objective of their work.

We'll spend a few weeks on site in interviews, observing processes,

taking measurements, reviewing CAD drawings, reviewing standard operating procedures, all of the different documentation, policy documentation, all in an effort to get up to speed on the hows and whys of how that operation operates today. At the same time, we've got our analysts tasked with collecting data, rolling up that data, and it's a whole myriad of information that we pull together, inbound and outbound transportation,

order data, like order volume, seasonality, inventory, densities of inventory, all across the by categories, you name it, we're kind of digging at productivity levels. When we get through that kind of operational piece and the data component, we bring them together and effectively do a gap analysis, right? And we identify where the constraints, where the areas of opportunity, and ultimately bring those together

and present that back to our customer and engage them in a very collaborative kind of workshop setting where we're saying, here are the areas of opportunities that we're seeing. Here's some initial conceptual thinking in terms of how we might resolve that and how this operation, you know, we try to paint a picture for them in terms of what that operation could look like in the future and identify for them what the anticipated benefits, potential costs in order to get down that path and get to that type of operation, what that would look like.

It's a very collaborative conversation back and forth. It invites the key stakeholders to participate in kind of painting that picture of the future state and having an investment in what that end solution looks like.

We're able to collect additional feedback from them and ideas. We're able to refine our thinking at that point. Once we get alignment around those things, we'll ultimately take it away. We'll finalize our recommendations. We'll finalize the business case in support of it. And as I mentioned earlier, we'll place all of those recommendations or those future initiatives along a roadmap to help them envision an implementation path in order to get that work done. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, having that

Because especially when you look at operations, you're kind of, you know, on a day-to-day basis, like you're, I won't say you're trying to survive, but in a sense, like you're, you know, you're just trying to get through the order volume and the workflows, you know, on a day-to-day basis. And oftentimes it's difficult to find the resources or the time to take that step back and really do an assessment yourself, right? So I can see the value in

you know, bringing in a third party to do that and take a look and a different set of eyes too, to, to say like, you know, Oh, well, you know, you know, why are you doing something like this? And you're like, well, I don't know. We've done it this way for 10 years. Right. You know, like how do we take a look and take that step back? So I, I'm curious. I mean,

From those operational assessments, I mean, is there one thing or two things maybe that stand out or are the most kind of common things that come up that you see that are, you know, some of the things that, you know, people are typically doing but could be doing in a better way?

I think there's a whole host of things that come out of an operational assessment. I mean, these are, well, first of all, they're very proactive. So there isn't necessarily a burning platform.

At the operation, I mean, these are proactive initiatives sponsored by the senior management team, and they're interested in taking a look at the operation and identifying ways to improve throughput or reduce cost or improve performance from an orderly time or delivery on time delivery perspective.

I don't think there's one theme. I mean, it's a number of things. We go through those assessments and we find opportunity to change layouts, to introduce different picking processes, different packing processes. Certainly the way systems are leveraged, how inventory is, you know, kind of the dock to stock process and receiving. Are there lean principles in place on the site? Is the, you know, the dock, the packing area has been 5S'd and things organized properly.

Certainly from a leadership perspective, we see opportunities for improvements often just from an organizational structure and leadership perspective. We find opportunities in the way that temp labor and full-time labor is balanced off against one another and the reliance and over-reliance at times on temp labor. So, I mean, there's a whole host of things that can be identified and prioritized through these types of assessments.

But again, these are all very proactive things, right? You know, in contrast to an assessment, we also do things called operational turnarounds, right? We're asked to get involved in operations that for one reason or another are not performing to standard. Sometimes

urgently, right? Urgent action is required in order to get buildings up to a point where customers aren't angry and screaming about unfilled orders, late delivering orders. And so we'll get called in to perform these operational turnarounds. And

The process is similar. We deploy a small team. They get on site very quickly. They typically, within the first week, will run a diagnostic, figure out what's causing the issues, and develop an action plan that we need to get alignment by the senior leadership team and the on-site leadership team to rally around to execute over the next 10 to 11 weeks. We need a very quick turnaround to get the operation back up to par, so to speak. Over the last couple of years, I would say we've probably

performed six or seven of those operational turnarounds. And, you know, more often than not, these situations occur when

There's going to be a number of contributing factors, but they occur often when there's multiple facilities that get merged into one. Maybe an organization has made the decision to centralize their distribution. They had smaller regional sites and they pulled them into one single central site. It just isn't the experience of running a large operation or the setup and planning of that site.

wasn't as effective as it could have been. But ultimately when they, they turn on that site or start up at that site, they're just not getting the performance that they anticipated. And a lot of that, it results in a lot of customer noise and issues, challenges, and ultimately we'll get a call to come in and help. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it's, you know, there's so many variations and, you know, things that are going on there. Like you said, there's a proactive approach and then there's, you know, the,

where things are not going very well. There's a more urgent approach to that as well. But I'm curious, you mentioned in there earlier about bringing expertise to the table in a sense, right? And being able to, from a consultant perspective, something's going on, something maybe the company's never done before or facing a challenge that they don't necessarily know how to handle. When it comes to that, I mean, when does it make sense to...

I guess, engage a consultant versus going out and hiring the expertise full time. How do you make that decision and how do you kind of balance the, the both sides? Yep. Yeah. I think, you know, and I might be biased in my, my perspective here, but I think anytime a client or a customer is an organization is planning an initiative that they recognize they, they don't have the internal expertise and experience to execute it. Uh,

or the internal bandwidth to execute it along the timeline that they want to. I think both are opportune times to reach out and look for some additional support. I think the other opportunity is when a client simply wants to evaluate their performance or processes in any particular area of their operation. Like I said, if it's upstream in their supply chain or within the four walls

of a distribution center, an external perspective is invaluable in those situations. And so I think all three of those situations are a great opportunity to reach out, look for some external help.

The process, I mean, and here's the other thing that there might be a misnomer in that every project is you have this vision of a team of 20 consultants descending upon your organization and taking over a whole floor at your head office and being there for years at a time. I mean, that's just not how we operate. And those aren't the types of engagements that we're typically involved in.

Initiating one of these engagements is fairly straightforward. It starts with a phone call or reaching out to us via LinkedIn, either through our SCA page through LinkedIn or directly through me, setting up a conversation for an initial introduction and getting to know each other and us getting to know your business and what the objectives of the business are and more about the initiative that they're looking to undertake. And then it

Relatively quickly, we can turn around some thoughts and concepts in terms of how we feel as though we can add some value and support the initiative. And we run on projects that are as simple as a single workshop, right? We'll plan and facilitate a single workshop for an organization who they might be considering outsourcing as an option. And we'll run a workshop for them to give them an understanding of the market today, who the key providers are, the pros and cons, the process for going to market.

And that'll be the extent of our engagement. And then, of course, we do operate on some larger engagements that teams, three, four, five people, extended periods of time. But again, all the while, these engagements are aligned to the level of value that they're driving in the organization. And so I would encourage your listeners and companies out there to engage.

at least engage a consultant in a conversation, right? Invite them into a conversation and see how they might help support it. And then you've got the information that you need to make decisions on how you, how and whether you want to leverage them and when. Yeah. Yeah. Really great insights there. And I think that's kind of a,

a nice little one-on-one on how to work with a consultant in a sense and how to evaluate working with a consultant and when to bring them in. So I really appreciate you sharing that. Now, obviously, you know, as a consultant, you get to see a lot of different operations, a lot of different projects, a lot of different views on the industry. So I'm curious, you know, I guess our closing thought here, if you could share one of the...

probably most notable projects that stands out to you in your career and kind of what were the takeaways from that project? Yeah. So I'll provide a drill down into a couple that I think will be relevant. But I would tell you like over...

Over 30 years, we've probably worked in over 600 unique engagements and with over 300 different clients. And so that work is across all sorts of industries. Like I said, it's highly transferable supply chain principles and skills, et cetera. And so we've worked in retail, we've worked in manufacturing, we've worked in utilities, industrials like HVAC, service parts, appliances,

defense and other public sector. So we've kind of run the gamut.

Some of the highlights, and these are only anecdotes, but I mean, we were heavily involved in the initial early days of the pandemic, right? We were involved in rescuing a pandemic stockpile. We stood up an entire, almost entire supply chain to support a pandemic response, you know, planning, procurement of goods, the distribution infrastructure to support the deployment of those goods, the order allocation methodology to manage supply chain.

the distribution of those goods and make sure it was getting into the appropriate hands, the transportation to deliver it.

We were involved with a mining company who had operations in Northern Canada. And again, this is just anecdotal. It just, it comes to mind other than being in Northern Canada, almost to the Northwest territories. I can remember when we have to fly in camp and I can remember as we were getting out, they kind of usher you into a safety briefing as soon as you get off the plane. And, you know, normally within a warehouse, it's, you know, watch for, you know, you have your vest on your boots, your,

watch for trip hazards and equipment, operating equipment on the, this was, watch for bears and wolves that are on site and just recognition that all of the vehicles on site were unlocked in case you needed a quick getaway. So again, lots of different environments that we get exposed to, but when it comes to, we'll start with a DC turnaround.

You know, we did a, I'll give you the drill down into that. We had a client based in the Midwest. They had facilities across the U.S., four facilities at the time across the U.S. And they were merging them into a single site in Indianapolis.

And it was 430,000 square feet. And about six months after they started up that operation and they struggled from the initial startup, but about six months in, they gave us the call and said, we urgently need some help. We're not quite sure where to go. We're having a hard time getting orders out the door. We're struggling with productivity. Our costs are way up. We can't get the orders out. We've got customers screaming at us.

all of those things. And within a couple of days of that initial phone call, we had a team on site. We ran through the diagnostic within the first week. We had an action plan together by the end of that week. And over the course of the next, I think it was 10 weeks or 12 weeks, we ran through the execution of this action plan. And it's not

It doesn't roll out exactly as you've laid it out in the first week. There's reprioritization that goes and dependencies that you learn along the way. But ultimately, over the course of that 12 weeks, I think by the end of that, we had nearly 100% improvement in productivity rates. Costs were down, like per unit costs were down, or per order costs were down about 25%. We were meeting the customer SLAs in terms of fill rates and on-time delivery. And so

very stable at that point. Over the course of that time, you say, "How the heck do you get to 100% productivity improvement and 25% reduction in cost?" We went through an entire re-slotting of the primary bins. We introduced a brand new picking process, a new packing process, all new pack station, equipment layout,

5S, the entire dock and pack area, expanded the battery charging area and capacity, dropped new Wi-Fi and access points to support a new Wi-Fi network for coverage in the building, rebalanced, I mentioned attempt to hire or attempt to full-time before, rebalanced that attempt to full-time labor strategy because it was completely backwards when we got in there. So over a short period of time, execute a number of different changes within that building. And then

left that client with a roadmap towards continuous improvement because there's a number of things you identify that you can't get done within the first 12 weeks either they're lower on the priority scale or they simply take too long and so you're handing off some things that are in in process but invited back I want to say 12 weeks after concluding that project to do a

an audit or health check on the operations. Just take a look through, did everything stick? Is there anything that's starting to get off track? Is there any other refinement or new opportunities that you identify? And so a client who was very happy with where we got to in that first 12 weeks, obviously very measurable results that made a huge difference in that building. And then someone that we continue to engage with to improve the operation going forward. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's great. And I love too that they were so open to so much change, right? Because it sounds like you did a lot there, right? I mean, you're talking about changing the way they pick, changing the pack stations, all this different stuff. And so how do you...

navigate that because i i think you know oftentimes we see in the industry there's some like resistance to to change a little bit or it's tough to see like you know the the end goal and insight right because like i said before like you're just trying to just trying to get those those orders out and like oh now all of a sudden you're gonna like change my pack station and my packer is gonna be like what's going on here you know i like

I like the way we had the tape before or something like that. I mean, how do you navigate some of that change management? Yeah, I mean, in that particular situation, I think...

Well, in any of those situations, you're helped by the fact that there's a lot of pressure on the operation at the time that we're being introduced. And so nobody liked to operate that way. And so when we're engaged, I mean, first we position ourselves as help, not that we're there to dictate anything different. We're there to bring our experience and our exposure to best practices in other operations. And that's our role. And it's the combination of our external perspective and experience

combined with their expertise around their business and the business context that they understand. It's the combination of those two things that's going to lead to the right solutions and initiatives for that operation. And again, I think we're able to communicate with

site leadership and frontline operators because our team, I mean, we've held those roles. We've been in those positions. And so there's a great empathy that comes from our team. There's a great ability to communicate in language that's shared, right? In terms of what the pros and cons and benefits of different changes to the operation. We're good listeners. I mean, we certainly listen to the information that's being fed back by the operations team. That's critical.

And so I think, you know, in our case, it served us well, if you're very good listeners and you can articulate a clear plan and the rationale and thinking behind some of the changes that you're recommending be made, we do a pretty good job at getting buy-in. And when there is, you know, when there's adamant pushback, we take that to heart. And if we need to refine our thinking, we do that. I mean, again, it's the coming together of minds that I think is the most powerful in these situations. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Interesting.

Yeah, very interesting to talk to you here, Daryl, and learn a little bit about kind of the, you know, some of what you've seen in the industry. And also, you know, very interesting, too, to learn about, you know, how to navigate the

the idea of bringing in an operational consultant and getting involved with one and when to engage as well. And I think that's really important to understand is when do you need to bring in that expertise and how do you bring in that expertise and, you know, be able to utilize it and get the most value out of it. So I really appreciate you coming on and sharing those insights with us. If people are interested in learning more about Supply Chain Alliance or getting in touch, what's the best way to do that?

Our website's a good source of information on the firm. There's a contact form at the bottom of the homepage where if people are looking to connect with us, they can reach out via the webpage. I would invite anybody to follow us on LinkedIn, on the SCA page on LinkedIn and or reach out to me directly through LinkedIn. I'd be happy to set up a time that we can get introduced and learn more about your businesses.

All right, great. And we'll definitely put all that information in the show notes as well as at thenewwarehouse.com so people can easily find it and get in touch with you, Daryl. And really appreciate you coming on and sharing your time with us today. You've been listening to The New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Lahti. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com.

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