The Situation
Tranzonic was seeking to consolidate its distributed West Coast distribution operations into a single location that would simplify logistics, reduce drayage costs, and lower combined rent and LTL/TL transportation expense. The company operated multiple facilities across the western time zone, and the portfolio had become increasingly inefficient as shipping volumes grew.
The question wasn't simply "which city has the cheapest industrial space" — it was "which single location produces the lowest total cost of operations when transportation, labor, drayage, and rent are all accounted for simultaneously." Optimizing for any one variable in isolation would produce the wrong answer.
The Approach
We quantified Tranzonic's current West Coast cost exposure across all four factors — transportation logistics, drayage, labor, and rent — establishing a total-cost baseline for the existing distributed portfolio. We then modeled the same four-factor cost profile for multiple candidate consolidation sites across the western time zone.
Each candidate site was evaluated under three scenarios: current volume, 20% growth, and 30% growth — ensuring the recommendation would hold as the business scaled rather than being optimized for current conditions only. Warehouse labor residence maps within 30-minute drive times were produced for each alternative site to validate labor availability assumptions at each candidate market. Las Vegas, NV and Lebec, CA emerged as the leading consolidation candidates across all scenarios.
A consolidation decision made under current volume conditions may be wrong at 30% growth. Building the model across scenarios meant the client could commit to a location with confidence across their range of futures.