case library / profitability
Meridian Ports: Port Alpha Downtime Diagnostic
A medium profitability case, candidate-led, built for live practice with an AI interviewer that grades like a coach.
- Profitability ops downtime
- candidate-led
- medium
- ~30 min
- 2 exhibits
Meridian Ports operates four city ports and charges customers a per-ton handling fee, not a per-ship fee. Over the past year, Port Alpha's profit has fallen by $18 million while its three sister ports have stayed stable and national port volumes overall are flat to up. The CEO has asked us to find the root cause of Port Alpha's decline and recommend a fix.
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 5 phases, with 2 exhibits 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 profitability case
Profitability cases are the most common first-round case type. The client's profits are down, flat, or below plan, and your job is to find out why and what to do about it. Nearly every strong approach starts from the same identity: profit equals revenue minus cost, revenue splits into price and volume, and costs split into fixed and variable.
What separates strong candidates is not the tree itself but how they drive it: segmenting before averaging, asking whether the problem is company-specific or market-wide, and moving from diagnosis to a quantified recommendation. Interviewers listen for a candidate who isolates the driver quickly instead of touring every branch.
Run Meridian Ports: Port Alpha Downtime Diagnostic live, free. About 30 minutes, graded in the same sitting.
Start practicing freefree · no card · graded in minutes