Services
- Logistics and Operations Management Consulting
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Logistics and Operations Management consulting services available from Gilbert Group include capacity assessment and planning, investment studies, project management, demand planning, optimization and efficiency studies, and modeling. These tools can be used individually or combined to build organizational effectiveness, increase efficiency, and determine future courses of action.
- Transportation and Logistics Sourcing Support
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Gilbert Group Consultants are experts in transportation and logistics sourcing. Using a comprehensive sourcing process, dedicated resources for supplier outreach, and custom-built analytical tools, Gilbert Group Consultants have successfully sourced over $30 million in transportation and logistics services. Recent projects have included Dry Van, Flatbed, and Bulk Truckload transportation services; as well as Less-Than- Truckload service; and Warehousing and 3PL services.
Our consultants visit client operating sites to ensure that all needs are well understood and documented in the RFQ. Extensive transportation and logistics knowledge allows Gilbert Group Consultants to find and include a wide variety of suppliers in specialized geographies and niche markets. Our knowledge of suppliers' unique capabilities helps to ensure a successful selection process and helps clients avoid pitfalls that can occur when new providers are brought onboard.
After sourcing new suppliers, a critical step that is often overlooked is implementation support. Gilbert Group Consultants provide practical, implementable solutions and often help clients integrate new suppliers after completing the sourcing process. This ensures continuity, mitigates risk, and helps to lock in identified savings.
- Logistics Process Development & Business Process Re-engineering
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Process Development and BPR are used to ensure alignment of systems, processes, and personnel with critical business activities. An outside point of view is often helpful in identifying ways to speed decision-making, make better use of resources, and address broken linkages.
Typical projects involve an in-depth study of financial and operating data to uncover issues and opportunities in logistics, transportation, and supply chain management activities. Next, detailed interviews with process owners, managers, and users clarify our understanding and produce ideas about how to proceed. After discovery, a preliminary report is issued, and discussions are held regarding the implementation phase of the project. Once the path forward is agreed upon, we work closely with the client's personnel to build and implement the new solutions, and create useful, practical measures of performance. This high level of client involvement ensures that new systems and processes are maintained and used long after the implementation is completed.
- Marketing Analysis and Forecasting for Operations
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Effective operational planning requires good demand data and accurate forecasts of future business activity levels. Using our strong analytical capabilities, Gilbert Group Management Consultants can help companies to segment markets more effectively and build better forecasts to support operational planning.
Beyond segmentation, our experts can help companies research markets, formulate and implement detailed marketing plans and build prospecting tools and lists.
Gilbert Group Consultants are experts in transportation, logistics, and supply chain management, and can provide specialized marketing support to suppliers of transportation and logistics services and providers of transportation and logistics-related products and services.
- Operations and Logistics Planning
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Robust planning processes ensure that future goals are not compromised by short-term decisions. Organizations often outgrow their planning capabilities. Periodic reviews of planning requirements and activities are needed to ensure that critical business decisions are made by the right people, at the right frequency, and with the right inputs.
Typical projects involve review and adjustment of processes regarding the most important decisions being made within the organization, with particular attention paid to procurement of long leadtime items, capital investment, personnel requirements, maintenance and downtime scheduling, and demand forecasting.
Planning process development includes determining the correct frequency of the planning cycle for each type of decision being made, determining whom should be involved in making the decision, building linkages to business activities from planning outputs, and creating measures and tools to determine planning effectiveness.