Friday, August 8, 2008

Profile of JP Farrell

James P. Farrell, Management Consultant @ Large


Jim Farrell has been a practicing consultant for 20 years, having served at the partner and principal levels in the supply chain and consumer products practices of firms that have done groundbreaking work in those fields, including A.T. Kearney, Cleveland Consulting Associates and Adjoined Consulting.

Prior to embarking on a consulting career, Mr. Farrell served the executive teams of two leading transportation companies, Schneider National and IU International. He also held the position of Economist with the US Department of Transportation, publishing papers in support of deregulation of the motor carrier industry and promotion of mass transit.

His clients have included some of the leading names in business, including Kellogg, McDonald's, Starbucks, Wyeth, Eli Lilly,
Federal Express, Bell Canada, Sears, Coca-Cola, and other major manufacturers, retailers, and distributors.

Mr. Farrell holds a M.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan, where he passed qualifying exams for Ph.D. candidacy. While in graduate school he was an instructor of economics at Eastern Michigan University and Concordia College (Ann Arbor).

He has published a number of articles and has been cited as an authority by international, national and regional newspapers and trade publications in the US, Mexico, Hong Kong and Europe, including The Economist of London. He has spoken at national meetings of the Council of Logistics Management, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and other organizations.

As the author and developer of "A Management Consultant @ Large," Jim is exploring the potential for blogging as a medium of business development for professional service firms. A number of
the posts of A Management Consultant @ Large have been featured on major online media.

A collection of posts about the US Economy is maintained here.


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Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Finding the Magic in a Consulting Career

Roger Kallock


Sometimes an organization continues to live long after its charter has expired. Cleveland Consulting Associates (CCA) gave up its name to CSC, its current owner, in 1995. However, to the first generation of supply chain strategists and their clients CCA remains a name packed with meaning.

Founded in 1974 by consultants Jim Spira, Roger Kallock, Jim Blaser and Keith Helferich, CCA took a rigorous and comprehensive approach to operations analysis, featuring advanced decision-support modeling in its consulting process. Spira, Kallock and Blaser, all in their early thirties, came to the firm with prior consulting and operations experience from such places as A.T. Kearney, Ernst & Young, and Procter & Gamble. Helferich, an operations research scientist, contributed analytical muscle, developing one of the first and most enduring mathematical approaches to optimizing distribution network strategy. Another early member, David DeRoulet, rose to the position of President of the firm and is now a leader in Deloitte Consulting's Consumer Business consulting practice.
"We wanted to move forward more aggressively using computer capabilities to integrate the functional silos within physical distribution into what we would today call the supply chain. We recognized that the computer would allow us to evaluate a lot of options quickly. It gave us a foot in the door," said Kallock in a 2003 interview.

According to Jim Spira, "Operationalizing strategy is about developing links between the buy, make, move and sell functions of a company, and tightly aligning them with their competitive strategy."
By 1981 the firm had more than thirty members. As the company grew, it set its targets on Fortune 500 manufacturers, as well as major distributors and retailers. A London office was established in the mid-80's to support work at Guinness and then other clients. The firm added both to its capabilities in operations research and its office footprint when it acquired Analysis, Research and Computation, Inc., (Austin, TX), headed by G. Terry Ross, in 1984 and Optimal Decision Systems, Inc., (Cincinnati, OH), which had been founded by Richard Murphy and Tom Thompson, from Schneider National in 1988. With the acquisition of Paragon Consulting Group in 1991, headed by the late Carl Blonkvist, the firm established its credentials more broadly in the area of operations strategy.

In the late 1980's ownership changed, but operating control remained in the hands of the principals. The company attracted the attention of advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi, which acquired it in 1987 as part of its strategy to become a powerhouse in professional services. In 1989 Saatchi returned its focus to advertising and CCA management helped engineer the second sale of the firm to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), which continued to promote the CCA brand until early 1995.

While the firm never had more than about 100 professionals, it developed an unusually strong reputation among logistics professionals, commanding rates that rivaled those of the top strategy consulting firms. This reputation was due in no small part to the work of an exceptional marketing staff, including Julia Marlowe Kirby (now a senior editor at Harvard Business Review) and Robert Baginski (who later headed marketing at CSC, Accenture, and Satyam).

In 1990 Kallock was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the Council of Logistics Management (now CSCMP), an award given annually to an individual who has made significant contributions to the art and science of logistics management, considered by many to be the highest honor in the field.

The firm weathered some setbacks, most notably the defection of a small, but significant cadre in 1989 to form the seed for the Andersen Consulting logistics practice. The business downturn in 1991 required the first major reduction in force, taking with it a number of promising colleagues. In adversity, however, the firm offered unusual opportunities for rising stars to build the second generation of leadership.

Where was the magic? It is a recurring question for the alumni of the firm at their biannual reunions. And it is not an idle one. Many, if not most of the alumni have continued consulting careers with leading roles at CSC, A.T. Kearney, Accenture, AlixPartners, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, Deloitte Consulting, Diamond Technology, EDS, IBM, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and many smaller firms. Inevitably we remember CCA as the model of a happy and profitable firm that succeeded on a number of levels:
  • Management followed clear strategic intent in selecting offerings, clients and talent
  • Talent and skill were prized over pedigree and intellectual property
  • Teams were organized into topic-related "practices," each responsible for selling and delivering its own work
  • Consultants worked "in the trenches" with clients, developing deep operations expertise to complement their analytical approaches
  • We had fun together
Strategically, CCA operated nearly exclusively within a well-defined niche, offering only those services that it could deliver with confidence. Marketing was primarily through reputation and participation in trade conferences, though in the early years principals sometimes needed to feed the mill with cold calls. Marketing staff at first concentrated on sales proposal support, creating thoughtful copy and distinctive appearance for written materials placed before prospects. As professional writers joined the firm in the late 1980's CCA was able to produce targeted mailings featuring provocative issue papers.

Contracts with clients were clear and simple, usually offering a well defined set of activities (deliverables) for a fixed fee. There were no hidden fees, such as markups of expenses, nor undisclosed side deals with software providers. Consulting management participated directly in the delivery of the work, taking personal responsibility for the outcome of the projects and freeing staff from worry about the political ramifications of their recommendations.

Unusual care was taken in hiring consultants, with every new hire personally interviewed by at least four members of the consulting staff. Three criteria were paramount: (1) did the person have genuine expertise in at least one relevant area; (2) was he or she smart and adaptable; and (3) would this person play well with others.


This last criterion was unusually important, because teams generally ate together on the road and consultants frequently got together informally as well. In small groups at Moose O'Malley's and the Barking Spider or in large ones at Roger's and Gail's annual picnic, we and our friends and spouses traded quips and stories and inside jokes, many involving male pattern baldness. We fielded teams for softball and basketball and fantasy football. The Plum Fantasy Football League still convenes in a Cleveland training room, more than twenty years after its founding; some of its coaches now fly in for the annual draft.

We came to believe that it was standard business practice when Ivan Foster, Director of HR, would drop in on a new member of the firm to present a copy of Dress for Success. Engineers from Big 10 schools often needed a fairy godmother to prepare them for the consulting ball. In serious cases, like my own, Ivan would take us to his tailor, The Clothes Horse, to be outfitted with our starter suits and ties.

Consultants learned and practiced their craft through apprenticeship, trial and error. Every consulting manager expected to tear up an apprentice's first deck. Once past that hard lesson, new consultants learned quickly to adapt to the style and methods of their project managers. Officers imposed the same discipline on project managers. If a client was not satisfied that the team had delivered on its expectations, the team was redirected to the tasks, usually over a series of long days and nights, until the firm was satisfied that it had done all that could be reasonably expected.

The approach placed an unusual level of reliance on the quality of management and instruction dealt out by the project leader. In those cases where the project manager had devised a poor plan or a badly conceived contract with the client, disaster would befall the project team. Eleven-hour days would stretch to sixteen or more and weekends would be spent in the office.

The economics of the model favored steady and profitable, but not explosive growth. With the firm focused in a relatively narrow niche, it was difficult to maintain continuous, multi-year relationships with all but the largest clients. As the fifth anniversary of the firm's acquisition approached, CSC management saw the potential to leverage the talent of its supply chain unit in larger, more systems-oriented engagements. CCA management found itself engaged in an endless series of discussions both internally and with its parent about the future of the firm's operating model.

Some chose the new path of adaptation and integration; others voted with their feet. But everyone looked back with fondness and some regret as the tribe dispersed.

Thanks to Terry Ross and Bob Baginski for their contributions to this article.

To learn more about our work in consulting, read about our Practice or check out our Case Studies.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Case Studies


Click on the links below to see case study summaries of some of our past projects.

See our posts on Restaurant Lifecycle Management here.

A collection of posts about the US Economy is maintained here.

To learn more about our work in consulting, please
see our Profile.

Contact JP Farrell and Associates, Inc.



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Retail Lifecycle Management


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Glossary of Terms Used on the Site

Search this page for definitions of terms and jargon used on A Management Consultant @ Large:

A Management Consultant @ Large



  • Business Model - a conceptual description of a company's purpose, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, trading practices and operational processes and policies.
  • CAD - Computer-Aided Design, usually referring to graphical design, but also including concept development and image management.
  • CAE - Computer-aided engineering is the use of information technology for supporting engineers in tasks such as analysis, simulation, design, manufacture, planning and simulation, diagnosis and repair.
  • CAM - Computer-Aided Manufacturing, software tools that assist engineers and machinists in manufacturing or prototyping product components by generating three-dimensional (3D) models using CAD.
  • CDO - Collateralized Debt Obligation, a security made up of a collection of fixed-income assets backed by collateral. A mortgage-backed security, for example, which is made up of a bundle of mortgages backed by real estate holdings, is a kind of CDO.
  • Channel of Trade - An established market mechanism for distributing and selling products that follows a well-understood set of merchandising, settlement and delivery policies.
  • Cloud (Internet) - A common depiction of the Internet as the place where information packets reside, regardless of how they got there.
  • CPD or cPDm - Collaborative Product Development or Collaborative Product Definition Management is a business strategy and method for enabling work teams to cooperate in product design and development across the extended enterprise.
  • Credit Default Swap (CDS) - A credit default swap is a contract between two counterparties, whereby the "buyer" or "fixed rate payer" pays periodic payments to the "seller" or "floating rate payer" in exchange for the right to a payoff if there is a default or "credit event" in respect of a third party or "reference entity". This financial derivative was widely used as a hedge against risky mortgage portfolios; however, it proved to be a high-risk instrument when mortgage failures climbed sharply in 2008.
  • Distribution - The collection of processes required to move product from a stocking point to a customer delivery location. These processes include carrier qualification, selection and contract management; product packaging, bundling and handling; and transportation management.
  • Distribution Network Strategy - A plan for positioning and purposing manufacturing, packaging, storage and distribution centers designed to balance competing objectives for customer service, logistics costs and supply security. Service objectives, which vary by market and product segment, typically involve: rapid fulfillment of orders; assurance of product availability; product protection; transaction accuracy; and frameworks of trading agreements and processes that simplify transactions and reinforce trust.
  • EAMS (Enterprise Asset Management Systems) - Applications that focus on the operational management and maintenance of a company’s facilities and equipment
  • Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 - Commonly called the "bailout plan," the bill granting unusual authority to the US Treasury Secretary to deal with the liquidity crisis of September and October, 2008.
  • Enterprise Architecture - The description of the current and/or future structure and behavior of an organization's processes, information systems, personnel and organizational sub-units, aligned with the organization's core goals and strategic direction
  • Extended Enterprise - A loosely coupled, self-organizing network of firms that combine their outputs to provide product and service offerings. Firms in the extended enterprise may operate independently or cooperatively.
  • Fast Food- See QSR (Quick Service Restaurant)
  • Folksonomy - A user-driven approach to defining taxonomies (used on this site, for example) that allows content contributors to describe their content with tags or labels that become part of a self-organizing search index on the site where the content resides.
  • Fulfillment - The process of filling orders and distributing products to customers.
  • IT - Information Technology - The study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware.
  • IWMS (Integrated Workplace Management Solution) - An enterprise platform that supports the planning, design, management, utilization and disposal of an organization's location-based assets
  • LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) - A building rating system developed by U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) that is used to assess the impact of the design on the environment.
  • Limited Menu - The primary merchandising strategy of quick service restaurants to hold in check product assortment and customization in order to maintain high throughput and quality control.
  • Mark-to-Market - Accounting rule by which corporations may be required to restate assets on their balance sheets to accurately reflect their current market values.
  • Mortgage-backed Security (MBS) - A security issued by a mortgage lender composed of a collection of collateralized mortgage loans.
  • Node or nexus - a point in a network where information, product, services and/or money is exchanged. A critical element of network strategy is the determination of where to locate nodes and what functions to assign to them.
  • Parametric Model - A parametric model is a set of related mathematical equations in which alternative scenarios are defined by changing the assumed values of a set of fixed coefficients (parameters).
  • PDMA Glossary - (PDMA.org)
  • PLM - Product lifecyle management - An integrated business approach to manage the creation and dissemination of product data throughout an enterprise.
  • Proof of Concept - The simplest possible program that will answer a question that you have about the tasks at hand.
  • QSR - Quick Service Restaurant,. Often called a Fast Food Restaurant, a QSR is a specific type of restaurant characterized by its limited cuisine and by minimal table service. Food served in fast food restaurants typically caters to a Western-style diet and is offered from a limited menu; is cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot; is finished and packaged to order; and is usually available ready to take away, though seating may be provided. Fast food restaurants are usually part of a restaurant chain or franchise operation, which provisions standardized ingredients and/or partially prepared foods and supplies to each restaurant through controlled supply channels.
  • Retail Lifecycle Management - The application of PLM techniques to the management of information about retail stores, their designs, components and sites.
  • RFID - Radio frequency identification, an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders, used for locating and identifying objects.
  • RLM - See Retail Lifecycle Management
  • Separability - The degree to which the operating costs of a business unit or business function are independent of the remainder of the business.
  • Service (SOA) - in process automation, a discretely defined set of contiguous and autonomous business or technical functionality.
  • Service-orientation - In systems architecture, a design goal of automating logic in the form of services as a means of creating systems in efficient, reusable modules.
  • SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) - an information modeling approach whereby functionality is decomposed into small, distinct units (services), which can be distributed over a network and then combined and reused as needed to create business applications.
  • Stocking point - A place, such as a warehouse or distribution center, where product is held before being distributed to customers or converted into an assembly, compound, ingredient or finished product.
  • Supply chain management - Planning, implementing and controlling processes, business policies, infrastructure and information related to the flow of materials used in the production and distribution of goods and related services.
  • Syndication of Content - The practice of making the content of a website available in such a manner that many other parties can pick it up via the Internet, automatically and as often as needed.
  • TARP - Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), under which the Secretary of the Treasury would be authorized to purchase, insure, hold, and sell a wide variety of financial instruments, particularly those that are based on or related to residential or commercial mortgages issued prior to March 14, 2008.
  • Web 2.0 - The second generation of the worldwide web, characterized by collaborative on-line communities, network-hosted applications, tagging ("folksonomy"), content syndication, and user-contributed content ("wikis").
  • Wiki - A collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it.
  • Workflow - a reliably repeatable pattern of activity enabled by a systematic organization of resources, defined roles and mass, energy and information flows, into a work process that can be documented and learned.
  • Zigbee - a communication protocol for wireless personal networks that is designed for secure, low-volume, energy-efficient radio frequency applications, such as locating and tracking assets in a warehouse or trailer.
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To learn more about our work in consulting, please see our Profile, download a brochure about our Practice, or check out our Case Studies.

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JP Farrell has provided paid consulting services to the following corporations:

His employers have included the U.S. Department of Transportation, IU International, Cleveland Consulting Associates, A.T. Kearney, Technology Solutions Company and Adjoined Consulting (acquired by Kanbay and Capgemini).

See our newsletter on Restaurant Lifecycle Management here.

To learn more about our work in consulting, read about our Practice or check out our Case Studies.

See Articles and Citations for links to works and quotes by JP Farrell in the mainstream media.




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