case library / operations and cost
Crestline Freight
A medium operations and cost case, candidate-led, built for live practice with an AI interviewer that grades like a coach.
- Cost reduction ops
- candidate-led
- medium
- ~35 min
- 1 exhibit
Your client is Crestline Freight, a large trucking and logistics company that hauls freight across all of North America. Over the last five years the company's costs have climbed steadily, driven mostly by rising driver wages, the industry is short of truckers, and Crestline has had to pay up to keep seats filled. Management now wants to reduce the company's operational costs. How would you advise them?
What happens when you run it live
Your interviewer holds answers to 4 clarifying questions candidates usually ask, so opening the case correctly gets rewarded. The case unfolds over 6 phases, with 1 exhibit handed to you at the right moments. You structure, do the math out loud, and close with a recommendation. Then you get a graded report across structure, quant, insight, synthesis, and communication, with the specific moments that cost you points. The exhibits, numbers, and answer key stay inside the live session, the way a real interviewer keeps the case packet on their side of the table.
How to approach a operations and cost case
Operations cases live in the physical world: throughput, capacity, downtime, labor, and the cost per unit of moving or making things. The math is usually contribution-style: what does an hour of downtime, a route, or a facility actually cost, and what does the fix cost against that.
Ground every claim in the operational driver behind it. Strong candidates trace a cost line to its physical cause, quantify the fix as an ROI or payback, and check second-order effects (service levels, safety, morale) before recommending. These cases reward candidates who can keep a model simple and still capture what matters.
Run Crestline Freight live, free. About 35 minutes, graded in the same sitting.
Start practicing freefree · no card · graded in minutes