Operations Consulting

Mid-market industrial companies
deserve Amazon-caliber
operational expertise.

We diagnose inefficiency, implement solutions, and measure the results — in 90 days. Compensated only when you win.

Working exclusively with industrial manufacturers & distributors generating $75M – $400M in revenue

90
Day engagement
cycle
25%
Of actualized
savings only
15+
Years operations
leadership
Warehouse Layout & Slotting Optimization Freight & Carrier Network Optimization Labor Productivity & Engineered Standards Inventory Management & SKU Rationalization Lean / Kaizen Process Improvement Distribution Center Operations Supply Chain Advisory Warehouse Layout & Slotting Optimization Freight & Carrier Network Optimization Labor Productivity & Engineered Standards Inventory Management & SKU Rationalization Lean / Kaizen Process Improvement Distribution Center Operations Supply Chain Advisory
The gap no one is filling well.
  • McKinsey and Deloitte don't take calls below $500M in revenue — and their engagement fees reflect it.
  • Independent freelancers lack the methodology, bandwidth, and credibility for complex multi-site engagements.
  • Internal teams are close to the problem, stretched thin, and rarely carry the cross-functional expertise to architect real change.
  • The result: mid-market operators carry inefficiency that Fortune 1000 companies solved years ago.
$750K+
Minimum savings
threshold per engagement
The Problem

You're running a $150M operation on tools designed for a $30M company.

Most mid-market manufacturers and distributors are operating with processes, systems, and cost structures that haven't been stress-tested since the business was half its current size. The savings are there. The expertise to find and capture them typically isn't.


Morrell Consulting exists to close that gap — bringing Amazon-scale operational methodology directly to the $75M–$400M industrial market, at a price structure that makes the engagement a straightforward ROI decision.

How We Work

Three phases.
Ninety days.
No ambiguity.

Every engagement follows the same disciplined structure — diagnostic, implementation, measurement — with fees tied entirely to the savings we deliver. You'll know exactly what you're paying, exactly when you're paying it, and exactly what you're getting in return.

"We have no financial interest in overstating the opportunity or understating the result. Our fee is 25% of what we actually deliver — nothing more."
— Tony Morrell, Founder & Managing Principal
Phase 01
Operational Diagnostic
Days 1 – 21 · or 14-day expedited

On-site assessment, stakeholder interviews, and deep data analysis across your warehouse, labor, freight, and inventory operations. You receive a quantified opportunity inventory, a prioritized savings roadmap, and a proposed implementation scope — built on your actual numbers, not industry averages.

Fixed Fee
$30K standard · $40K expedited
Phase 02
Implementation
Days 21 – 60 · alongside your team

We work directly inside your operation — not from a PowerPoint deck — to design, test, and deploy improvements across the identified opportunity areas. Before a single change is made, both parties sign off on the baseline methodology and measurement approach. No surprises at invoice time.

Engagement Fee + Success Fee
Kickoff fee + 25% of actualized savings
Phase 03
Measurement
Days 60 – 90 · jointly verified

Savings are measured against the agreed baseline over a 30-day window — or longer if your operation requires it. Results are verified and signed off jointly by your CFO or Controller and our team. The fee invoice follows sign-off, not the other way around.

Standard Timeline
90 days start to finish

Following a successful engagement, select clients are offered an ongoing monthly retainer — an embedded operational partner for continuous improvement, KPI management, and executive advisory.

Services

We fix the things that cost you the most.

Five core service lines, all grounded in Lean and Kaizen methodology, and all delivered through the same diagnostic-to-implementation engagement model. We don't consult from the outside — we work from the inside.

Cost Reduction
Freight & Carrier Network Optimization

Audit your carrier portfolio, analyze lane performance, right-size mode selection, and renegotiate contract terms. Freight-to-revenue is one of the highest-leverage cost levers in mid-market distribution — and one of the most consistently underoptimized.

Typical outcome: 6–15% reduction in total freight spend
Cost Reduction
Inventory Management & SKU Rationalization

Reduce carrying costs, eliminate slow-moving and obsolete inventory, and sharpen your replenishment logic. SKU proliferation is a silent margin killer in manufacturing and distribution — we quantify the cost and build the path to a leaner, faster-turning catalog.

Typical outcome: 15–25% reduction in inventory carrying costs
Operational Performance
Warehouse Layout & Slotting Optimization

Redesign physical and logical warehouse configurations to minimize travel time, improve pick rates, and increase throughput. Layout and slotting decisions made years ago are costing you labor hours every single day — the fix is often faster and cheaper than operators expect.

Typical outcome: 12–20% improvement in pick productivity
Operational Performance
Labor Productivity & Management Systems

Benchmark productivity, identify non-value-added activity, and implement engineered labor standards and management operating systems. Labor is typically the largest controllable cost in a DC — and the place where improvement is most visible, most measurable, and most sustainable.

Typical outcome: 15–30% reduction in labor cost per unit
Methodology
Lean / Kaizen Process Improvement

Facilitate structured Kaizen events, Value Stream Mapping, and continuous improvement roadmap development. We don't just identify waste — we build the internal capability to keep finding and eliminating it after we're gone.

Typical outcome: Sustained 10–20% efficiency gains post-engagement
Custom Engagement
Additional & Agreed-Upon Areas of Focus

Every operation is different. If your most pressing challenge doesn't fit neatly into a predefined service line — whether it's a specific process bottleneck, a systems integration issue, a network design question, or an area surfaced during the diagnostic — we scope it, price it, and solve it. The engagement is built around your operation, not our catalog.

Scoped and priced per engagement — outcomes defined before work begins
Results

What engagements look like in practice.

The following are representative engagement profiles. Client details are anonymized by default — references are available upon request for qualified prospects.

Wholesale Distributor — Southeast
$210M Revenue · 94-Day Engagement

Challenge: Fragmented carrier portfolio across 6 lanes, no engineered labor standards, warehouse slotted for a catalog half its current size.

Annualized Savings Captured
$1.4M
Freight $680K · Labor $490K · Inventory $230K
Industrial Manufacturer — Multi-Site
$155M Revenue · 88-Day Engagement

Challenge: Two DC locations operating on inconsistent processes, labor productivity 22% below benchmark, no management operating system in place.

Annualized Savings Captured
$920K
Unified labor standards deployed across both sites
PE-Backed Distributor — Pre-Exit
$310M Revenue · 90-Day Engagement

Challenge: Operating Partner needed validated EBITDA improvement documentation ahead of sale process. Freight and inventory the primary targets.

Documented Annualized Savings
$2.1M
Presented to acquirer · Completed 4 days ahead of schedule

Engagement profiles are illustrative and anonymized. Verified references available upon request for qualified prospects.

Career Background
Senior Operations Manager
First & Final Mile Fulfillment
Strategy & Operations Consulting
Global Supply Chain Advisory
Executive Logistics Leader
Store Fulfillment
Executive Leader
Beverage Manufacturing, Hawaii
15+
Years in operations leadership
2
Fortune 50 operational environments
$1B+
In operational throughput managed
MBA · Arizona State University W. P. Carey School of Business Concentrations in Leadership and Business Data Analytics
M.S. Global Supply Chain & Logistics Portland State University
Six Sigma Green Belt · Kaizen Orchestration · APICS
About

Built by a practitioner.
Not a consultant.

Most consulting firms send you someone who has studied operations. Morrell Consulting was built by someone who has run them — at the most demanding scale in the world.

Tony Morrell spent years leading building-level operations inside Amazon's first and final mile fulfillment divisions, managing labor, productivity, safety, and continuous improvement across facilities processing millions of units. Before that, he served within GAP Inc.'s internal strategy and operations function — a formal consulting practice — advising across four global brands on supply chain and logistics challenges that spanned procurement, distribution, and last-mile delivery.

"I've seen what best-in-class looks like at the highest volume in the world. I built this firm to bring that standard to companies that have never had access to it — without the enterprise price tag or the 18-month engagement cycle."

What makes that background genuinely useful — rather than just impressive on paper — is how the pieces interact. Operational experience at Amazon's scale develops an instinct for finding waste that most consultants simply don't have: the ability to walk an operation and know, before the data confirms it, where the friction is hiding. Formal consulting methodology from GAP provides the discipline to structure findings, build a rigorous business case, and drive cross-functional alignment. Deep academic grounding in supply chain ensures the solutions aren't just operationally sound — they're strategically coherent. Together, those three lenses produce recommendations that are faster to diagnose, more defensible to leadership, and more durable once implemented.

The result is a firm that can engage with mid-market industrial operators at a level most boutique consultants can't match — and deliver it with a speed and directness that larger firms won't. Wherever your operation is, if the opportunity is real, we're interested in the conversation.

Accountability
We earn our fees. Our performance-based model means our success is tied directly and mathematically to yours.
Rigor
Recommendations are built on data and direct observation — not intuition, frameworks, or off-the-shelf playbooks.
Speed
Ninety days. Mid-market operators don't have 18 months of patience for a consulting cycle. Neither do we.
Expertise
Practitioner-level experience, not entry-level consulting credentials applied to industrial problems.
Who We Serve

We work with a specific type of company. Deliberately.

Morrell Consulting maintains a narrow, deliberately defined client profile. Not because we can't work with others — but because focus is what produces the best outcomes for the clients we do take on. Every engagement we accept meets the same criteria.

🏭
Industrial Manufacturers

Multi-SKU producers with complex inbound, production-adjacent, and finished goods distribution challenges. Typically operating multiple DC locations with fragmented carrier portfolios and labor productivity gaps that have grown with the business.

📦
Wholesale Distributors

Regional and national distributors carrying freight spend above 5% of revenue, SKU portfolios that have expanded faster than slotting logic has kept up, and DC operations designed for a smaller, simpler operation than the one running today.

📈
PE Portfolio Companies

CFOs and Operating Partners actively seeking validated EBITDA improvement ahead of hold-period optimization or exit. A 1–2% operational efficiency gain at a $150M company with an 8x exit multiple can translate to $12M–$24M in enterprise value — making a Morrell engagement a straightforward investment decision.

$75M Minimum annual
revenue
$400M Upper revenue
range
$750K+ Minimum savings
opportunity
SE Focus Primary geography
(national accommodated)
Common Questions

Straight answers to the questions we hear most.

What if the diagnostic doesn't surface enough savings to justify Phase 2?
If the diagnostic doesn't surface a minimum savings opportunity we're both confident in, we'll tell you plainly. We won't manufacture an implementation scope to justify Phase 2. The diagnostic is designed to be a standalone, honest assessment — and the $30K fee is priced to reflect that.
How is the savings baseline established — and what prevents disputes at invoice time?
Before a single change is implemented, both parties sign off on the baseline methodology in writing. The measurement approach, the agreed baseline numbers, and the calculation method are all documented and co-signed before Phase 2 begins. The invoice follows the jointly-verified result, not the other way around.
What does my team need to commit to during this engagement?
Typically: a primary internal point of contact with operational authority, access to your data systems and relevant financial reporting, and roughly 2–4 hours per week of stakeholder availability during implementation. We're designed to operate with minimal disruption to your day-to-day — you don't need to clear calendars or stand up a project team.
Do you work on an ongoing or retainer basis?
Following a successful engagement, select clients are offered a monthly retainer for continuous improvement tracking, KPI management, and executive operational advisory. It's offered based on fit — never assumed or included by default in the initial engagement scope.
Do you work with companies outside a specific region?
Yes. Engagements are evaluated on fit and opportunity — not geography. If the operation is the right size and the savings potential is real, we're interested in the conversation regardless of where you're located.
Get In Touch

The diagnostic starts with a conversation.

If you're running a mid-market industrial operation and you believe there are material savings you haven't been able to capture — we'd like to hear about it. The initial conversation is straightforward: tell us what you're dealing with, and we'll tell you honestly whether we think there's an engagement worth scoping.

No commitment, no pitch deck. Just a direct conversation with Tony.

Tell us about your operation.

We'll review your situation and respond within one business day with an honest assessment of whether a diagnostic makes sense.

Tony reviews every submission personally. Your information is never shared, and there's no obligation attached to reaching out.