Brewery Consultants - Brewing Consultants

Supply Chain

"A customer focused approach"

Having the right supplies, materials and resources in the right place, at the right time, is critical to improving customer satisfaction, competitive edge and attaining superior profitability.

First Key helps clients improve cash flow by achieving the optimum warehousing and distribution efficiencies through a "customer focus" approach that includes cross functional benchmarking, activity and customer service standards, inventory management, performance measurements, order placement-to-receipt processes, truck routing and fleet management, distribution system modeling, shrink management and management reporting.

Our logistics specialists understand beer distribution including the complex issues related to returnable containers and packaging. Backed with over 20 years of industry experience each, they work with clients to ensure that their resources and products move smoothly and efficiently through the supply chain and warehousing and distribution systems.

Our advanced analytical tools:

•	Continuous and discrete plant and warehouse location models
•	Linear and mixed integer programming
•	Discrete simulation
•	Process simulation
•	Truck routing and scheduling
•	Multi-echelon inventory analysis
•	Queuing analysis
•	Warehouse layout and design optimization and slotting algorithms
•	Geographic information systems for demand and network analysis

Service areas:

•	Supply chain and logistics audits
•	Supply chain strategy development
•	Procurement strategy
•	Facility location selection
•	Network design and flow optimization
•	Operations analysis
•	Inbound and outbound transport analysis
•	Distribution operations analysis
•	Inventory management and control
•	Warehouse layout and design and operations analysis
•	Process analysis and re-engineering
•	Third-party logistics and distribution
•	Supply chain best practices and benchmarking
•	Organizational excellence
•	Capital investment analysis
•	Demand Analysis
•	Forecasting

First Key - Commercial Strategy - Supply Chain

Services

Supply Chain

Testimonial

"We operate more then 45 casual dining restaurants in the United States; 10 of which are brewpubs. With the objective to minimize the total annual operating cost of beer supply and distribution from breweries to restaurants, we engaged First Key to conduct a network optimization study. They developed a network flow model with over 1500 variables and delivered a comprehensive "Optimization tool" for achieving our objective. A job well done".

Alex Puchner
Senior Vice President, BJ's Restaurants

Case Study

Purchasing Optimization by benchmarking the client’s product and services purchasing against best-in-class and identifying cost gaps. First Key presented a new purchasing strategy and action plan to close the cost gaps with identified potential savings in excess of $1.5 million from annual direct material spend and $2.7 million from annual indirect spend.