Kearney Case Study Examples: Official Casebook Cases, Solved (2026)
Kearney's practice material is thin but useful: an older candidate casebook with six sample cases and expert answer guides, and a careers page that lays out its five-step approach to a case. This page works all six casebook cases from the prompt to the recommendation, then adds two cases from the Road to Offer library that match the operations and profitability work Kearney is known for. For how the process runs, round by round, see the Kearney case interview guide; this page is the one to open when you want cases to solve.
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The casebook is old, and that matters in two ways. Its figures run from 2003 to 2006, so do not treat any number as current. And its answer guides are short: they tell you what a good answer contains but often skip the arithmetic that proves it. Where the printed key rounds, mixes two readings of the same sentence or does not total its own figures, this page says so and shows both versions. That is the more useful lesson, because a Kearney interviewer will ask what you assumed.
Kearney practice cases at a glance
How a Kearney case works: Kearney's own casebook says its cases are based in part on real engagements and cover industry analysis, profit improvement, investments, market expansion and pricing, with the interviewer playing the client. Candidate reports describe candidate-led cases with a lot of operations math, and the format, timing and any written case vary by office and role, so confirm them in your invitation.
Start free now: Bumpers R Us is a Kearney-style operations case: an automotive bumper supplier's delivery lead time has slipped, and its main customer is threatening fines. It has 7 questions, 2 with math, 2 exhibits, and fewer than 10 completed runs so far, so no median time yet. An AI interviewer runs it out loud, shows each exhibit when you reach it and scores the debrief. Your first full case is free when you create an account. A free account also gets one full run in every simulator inside the app: one complete run of each of our four McKinsey Solve practice formats (Red Rock, Sea Wolf, SFL Classic and SFL Island), a full Casey-style case, a full CCA-style diagnostic and a complete Bain SOVA-style diagnostic.
| Case (style, industry) | Quant difficulty | Qualitative difficulty | The math you run | Median time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Bumpers R Us (Kearney, automotive parts). 7 (2 with math), 2 exhibits. | medium | medium | Lead-time sum, initiatives under a budget | Fewer than 10 runs |
Discount Retailer (Kearney, retail). 6 (1 with math), 2 exhibits. | medium | medium | Gross profit 2015 and 2017, percent decline | Fewer than 10 runs |
MetroFresh Distribution Center Operations Turnaround (McKinsey, grocery distribution). 8 (4 with math), 4 exhibits. | easy | hard | Picking capacity gap, EBITDA initiatives | 23 min, 17 voice runs |
Titan Motorcycles Operations Optimization (Bain, motorcycle manufacturing). 8 (4 with math), 3 exhibits. | medium | medium | Cost per unit growth, outsourcing savings | 21 min, 11 voice runs |
Packaging Plant Consolidation (Bain, packaging manufacturing). 7 (1 with math), 1 exhibit. | easy | medium | Cost per package, consolidation savings | Fewer than 10 runs |
Bumpers R Us and Discount Retailer are the two cases in the case library tagged to Kearney's style. The other three are operations cases in McKinsey and Bain style, matched by case type. Three of the five are adapted from consulting club casebooks (Duke Fuqua, Cornell Johnson and Wharton) and the rest were written for Road to Offer. None is Kearney's own material. There are 92 cases in the library. Every debrief scores seven categories: structure (25% of the score), quantitative analysis (20%), business judgment (15%), and problem understanding, exhibit reading, communication and synthesis (10% each), with feedback on every question. Median times come from completed runs between June 25 and September 22, 2026, and count runs, not people.
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What do we actually know about the format of a Kearney case?
Kearney's own casebook describes real-engagement cases in five areas, a case and fit mix, and a written case for some candidates; the rest comes from candidate reports that disagree on details. The table separates what Kearney wrote from what coaches and candidates say, because the two are easy to blur.
Two practical readings follow. First, the older casebook and the 2026 coach guides agree on the shape (45 minute interviews, case plus fit, a written case for MBA and experienced hires) but not on the written case timing, since one source says a 10 minute pitch and another 20 to 30 minutes with questions. Second, Kearney says nothing public about who leads, and its casebook cases are a numbered list of tasks the interviewer reads out. That is why every case below includes both your opening structure and the directed questions, so you can practise either shape.
What does Kearney's own practice material include?
Kearney's careers site shows a five-step method on its promotional planning case page, and a six-case candidate casebook circulates online. Two things to know before you use them.
The promotional planning case page shows the method as a flowchart: pin down the issues, form testable hypotheses, validate and refine them, synthesize the evidence, and recommend actions with feasibility, risk and benefit in view. The page also carries a full case with a situation, a question, extra facts and answer guidelines. The case text sits in the page source, so some tools that read only the visible text miss it. The next section decodes it, and our Kearney case interview guide works a longer structure for it.
The second source is an A.T. Kearney candidate document titled Consulting Case Book and Tips for Interviewing, written after the firm returned to consultant ownership in January 2006. It is copyrighted material, so this page does not reproduce it. For the six cases below we restate each situation in our own words, keep the facts and figures a calculation needs (facts are not owned by anyone), credit the casebook as their source, and then solve each case our own way. The copy we read is hosted by a third party and linked from Hacking the Case Interview. If you want the casebook's own answer guides, read the original; this page is the worked reasoning and the arithmetic checks around it.
Use one loop on all eight cases: read only the prompt, write your structure, decide the first three pieces of evidence you would ask for, do the math before reading our answer, then compare. When a number differs, first check whether you and we read the same sentence the same way.
What is Kearney's official promotional planning case, and how do you answer it?
It is a diagnosis case: a grocery and drug chain gets less sales lift from promotions than its rivals, and the answer is a stock-out problem created by how stores order. This is our own summary of the case on Kearney's careers site, not a copy of it.
Prompt (our words). A national grocery and drug chain is losing share, runs periodic deep price cuts backed by print and in-store ads, and sees smaller sales lift on promoted items than the industry average. How would you raise the lift?
Facts that decide it (from Kearney's page, restated). Switching to everyday low pricing is off the table. The chain's prices, promotion timing and discount depth match its local rivals. Store managers order promoted stock several weeks ahead, sizing orders from past orders and gut feel. Distribution center buyers lack the lead time to use store orders, but they can see past promotion sales. Customers complain that promoted items are missing from shelves. The page gives no figures.
Structure. Split lift into two questions. Demand: would shoppers respond as much as they do at rivals? Supply: is the product on the shelf when they come? Price, timing and discount are identical to rivals, so the demand side is already ruled out by the facts. That leaves in-stock execution, then the ordering process behind it, then the fix.
Worked answer (the numbers are ours).
- The 2,000 units last 2,000 / 429, about 4.7 days, so the shelf is empty for the last 2.3 days.
- Units lost: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000, one third of demand. Lift is 2,000 / 1,000 = 2.0x against 3.0x, with prices identical.
- Past sales also understate demand when shelves ran empty. Sales of 2,000 over 4.7 of 7 days implies 2,000 / (4.7 / 7) = 3,000 of true demand, so buyers should adjust history for out-of-stock days.
Recommendation. Fix the forecast and the shelf check. Size orders from adjusted sales of past similar promotions. Add stock counts through the day, especially before the mid-afternoon order cutoff, so a reorder arrives the next morning. Giving stores live sales data on promoted items lets them reorder before the shelf runs empty. Next step: measure the in-stock rate on promoted items against rivals before building anything.
Casebook case 1: growth for a truck leasing business
Situation (our wording; facts from casebook case 1). A $2.5B transport and logistics group wants growth within two years from its truck leasing and maintenance unit (LM), whose revenue is flat while that market shrinks. Which growth move would you pick?
Our approach: find where we stand, then where the mass is.
Start with the client's footprint. The client's 24% of the 11% LM segment is 2.64% of registrations, about 124,000 trucks (4.7M x 2.64%). That is small next to the private-fleet segment, which is 60% of registrations, about 2.82M trucks.
Explain the flat revenue. A shrinking market with flat revenue means the client has been gaining share, and since the offer is undifferentiated, buying competitors or accounts is the likelier route than winning on product. The same fact removes price as a lever: raise it and customers see no reason to stay, cut it and revenue falls on a market that is already shrinking.
Find the unserved demand. Registrations are still rising while leasing falls, so most growth sits outside leasing. Large private fleets, such as retailers and grocers, want trucks on their own books but do not want to run workshops. A maintenance-only service fits them, probably at a lower price because there is no asset to finance.
Name the risks before the sizing. Existing lease customers may trade down to the cheaper plan (cannibalization), and a business built around bundled contracts may not be able to serve a maintenance-only buyer differently. Build the offer by interviewing prospects, listing attributes (priority service, shop coverage), surveying a representative sample across customer industries, then testing capability, upfront investment and price.
Size it, and say which base you use. The casebook asks what happens if the client wins "1%" of the private market. Two readings are both defensible:
Units are not revenue. A maintenance-only contract earns less per truck than a lease plus maintenance. If it earned half as much (our assumption, not in the case), the 23% unit gain is roughly 11% in revenue. Asking "1% of which base, and at what price?" before calculating is a stronger move than picking a reading silently.
Where candidates slip. Three common errors: jumping to "cut price" without noticing the offer is undifferentiated, treating the declining leasing market as the client's problem when the client is holding revenue, and quoting a growth percentage without saying whether it is units or revenue. An interviewer who hears a 38% figure will usually ask what the new contract is priced at. Have the lower-price assumption ready, and say that you would fix it with customer research, not a guess.
Recommendation. Launch a maintenance-only plan for large private fleets, priced below the full lease and sold only to customers who do not lease today, to limit cannibalization. Before committing capital, run the survey that fixes price and volume, because revenue moves from about 11% to 38% across the readings. Next step: size private fleets by customer type and rank them by how much of their maintenance they already outsource.
For a related growth rep with a flat-revenue client and a short-term versus long-term choice, try this one next.
Choose short- and long-term growth moves for a flat-revenue manufacturer
Industrial GoodsMedium
Casebook case 2: restoring growth for a software company
Situation (our wording; facts from casebook case 2). A large public software vendor's U.S. business, about $3.6B of its $10B revenue, has slowed from roughly 10% annual growth to 3%. How should it refocus to get growth back?
The two growing suites face strong competition and are expected to deliver about 80% of the next three years' growth. The vendor has always segmented by product and has favored large enterprises over small businesses.
Our approach: put the gap in dollars, then change the lens.
Size the prize. At 3% growth the U.S. business adds about $107M a year (3,566 x 3%); at 10% it would add about $357M. The job is to find roughly $250M a year of extra growth, which tells you how large the target segment needs to be.
Say where growth must come from. The two growing suites total $1,523M, about 43% of U.S. revenue. Growth has to be won there, against global rivals, so the question becomes which customers to chase with them.
Switch from a product lens to a customer lens. Here is the market data in $B, with our growth calculations:
Small business adds $49.2B of spend over the period, large corporations $16.5B, three times less. The vendor's revenue is $0.7B from small business (about 1.1% of that spend) and $1.2B from large corporations (about 1.5%), so there is headroom in both.
Pressure-test with software only. The vendor sells software, so isolate that line. Small business software spend goes from 9.3 to 20.0 (+115%, about 17% a year); large corporation software spend goes from 20.3 to 34.0 (+67%, about 11% a year). Small business still grows faster, but large corporations add more software dollars (13.7 against 10.7). So the focus case is real but is not a reason to abandon large accounts. The biggest part of small business growth is services (53.5 to 92.0), which raises the question of whether the vendor can sell or partner for services.
Choose the first industries. The case lists four small business industries. Divide spend by number of businesses, in the case's units:
Telecom and utilities spend roughly 42 times what an agriculture business does, so they come first and agriculture last. The caution is that telecom and utilities is also the smallest total pool, so the sales approach is a short list of named accounts, not a volume play.
Where candidates slip. The usual slips are segmenting only by product because the prompt does, ignoring that the vendor's own revenue base in each segment is small, and choosing the fastest-growing segment without checking who already serves it. A strong answer names the dollars at stake, the competitive intensity and the capability to sell to small accounts, then commits. If you only list segmentation variables, you have a framework, not an answer.
Recommendation. Aim the business suites at small and medium businesses first, starting with high-spend industries such as telecom and utilities, and keep large accounts as a protected base. Next steps: size the services opportunity and the cost of serving many small accounts before moving sales capacity. The main risk is that an enterprise-built sales model does not translate to small accounts.
For a segmentation case you can run out loud, try this one.
Segment a market and pick where to grow
Food & BeverageEasy
Casebook case 3: choosing a medical device distribution network
Situation (our wording; facts from casebook case 3). A U.S. medical device maker is entering Europe and must choose between two distribution networks, with cost and next-day delivery as the criteria. Which should it build?
Annual volume is 66,000 packages worth $66M ($1,000 each): Germany 20,000, France 15,000, Italy 12,000, Sweden 10,000, England 5,000, Poland 4,000. Delivery from a DC to a customer costs $10 a package. Hub-to-satellite legs cost $8.50 to $10 a package depending on the country. Space needs 0.1 square meter a package over a 300 day year; running a site costs $30 a square meter and building a DC $60; a DC must be at least 1,000 square meters. Stock is valued at 40% of sales and costs 20% a year to hold; option 1 holds 100 days at the hub and 30 at the satellites, option 2 holds 150 days at each DC.
Our approach: cost per package, then service, then see what inventory does.
Transportation. Option 2 sends every package DC to customer at $10: 66,000 x $10 = $660,000. Option 1 pays $10 for the last leg as well ($660,000), plus the hub-to-satellite legs: Germany 20,000 x $8.50 = $170,000, France $135,000, England $47,500, Sweden $95,000, Poland $36,000, Italy $120,000, which sum to $603,500. Option 1 transport is $1,263,500.
Warehousing. Option 1: the hub needs 66,000 x 0.1 x 100 / 300 = 2,200 square meters and the satellites 660. Running both costs $66,000 + $19,800; building the hub costs 2,200 x $60 = $132,000. Total $217,800. Option 2: 150 days is 3,300 square meters, but four DCs of at least 1,000 each means 4,000 square meters to build. Running costs $99,000 and building $240,000, total $339,000. Both totals add one-off build cost to an annual running cost, so say so out loud.
Inventory. Annual stock cost is 40% x $66M = $26.4M. Option 1 ties up $26.4M x 100 / 300 = $8.8M at the hub and x 30 / 300 = $2.64M at the satellites, $11.44M in all, costing $2,288,000 a year at 20%. Option 2 ties up $13.2M and costs $2,640,000.
Where the ranking flips. Transport and warehousing alone put option 1 at $1,481,300 and option 2 at $999,000, so four DCs look $482,300 cheaper. Inventory claws most of that back because four DCs each hold 150 days. If you treat the build cost as one-off and drop it, the totals are $3,637,300 and $3,399,000 and option 2 is $238,300 cheaper. Either way the cost ranking favors option 2.
Weigh cost against service. The gap is $130,300 on $66M of sales, about 0.2%, or roughly $2 a package on a $1,000 product. In exchange, option 2 delivers only half of orders next day and 20% on day three, on a product with healthy margins. Service is the deciding criterion, and option 2 also ties up $1.76M more stock ($13.2M against $11.44M).
Where candidates slip. Most people stop after transportation and warehousing, which makes the four DC network look far cheaper, and then recommend it. The inventory line, and the discipline to compare a 0.2% cost gap with a service gap you can describe in customer terms, is what separates a clean answer. Another slip is quoting the cost totals without saying what is annual and what is one-off.
Recommendation. Build the hub and satellite network. It costs about 3.5% more than four DCs but is the only option that meets next-day delivery. Explore a hybrid, such as a hub plus a few regional DCs for the slowest countries, and reduce stock with smaller batches and risk pooling. Risks to name: VAT and tariffs on cross-border moves, product expiry, and the fact that every volume rests on one marketing forecast.
Operations case Quick Math
- A retailer runs 600 promotional items a week at 82% in-stock compliance. Each in-stock promotional item generates $220 of weekly incremental revenue. What is the weekly revenue lost to out-of-stock promotional items, in dollars?
Lost revenue = Weekly items x (1 - In-stock rate) x Revenue per in-stock item.
- A manufacturer spends $140M a year on a key component. Consolidating suppliers wins 9% savings. What is the annual cost saving, in dollars?
Saving = Annual spend x Savings rate.
- Closing a warehouse removes $15M of annual fixed cost and $4M of annual variable cost while adding $7M a year of logistics cost. Closure and severance cost $9M once. What is the three-year return on investment, in percent? Round to the nearest whole percent.
ROI = (Three-year net saving - One-off cost) / One-off cost, where net saving nets fixed and variable savings against the added cost.
For a related logistics fleet decision with real constraints, run this case.
Choose a delivery fleet for a package business
LogisticsMedium
Casebook case 4: a private label threat to a branded cookie maker
Situation (our wording; facts from casebook case 4). A U.S. maker of branded cookies sees retailer-branded cookies taking share from it. How big is the threat, and how should it respond?
Interviewers usually start with a market size. A top-down sketch with assumed round inputs: 100 million households x 4 bags a year x $2.50 = $1B. The interviewer then fixes the market at $1B for the rest of the case.
Two more facts: consumer tests favor branded on taste and quality, and there is little spare capacity in the industry now. Grocers are pushing private label across categories, competition between grocers is rising and the economy is weakening.
Our approach: money per bag first, then who is losing.
Who earns what on a bag. Branded earns the manufacturer $0.75 (27% of its price) and private label $0.50 (25%). The retailer earns $0.75 on branded (21%) and $0.50 on private label (20%). So everyone in the chain earns more on a branded bag; the consumer is the one saving $1.00, or 29%. Private label is therefore growing because of shelf power, the economy and manufacturers filling spare capacity, not because it is more profitable per bag.
Who is actually losing. With a $1B market, rebuild revenue by player:
This assumes the rival had no private label sales 2.5 years ago, and today's three lines add to $1,000M, a good check. The client is gaining branded share (67% to 70%) yet is the only player whose total falls, because the rival and the small players grew by supplying private label while the client stayed out.
Judge the threat. Falling sales, a recession, grocer push and a rival already inside say the threat is high. Rising branded share, little spare capacity and visible quality say it is not yet existential. A defensible call is "moderate and rising", and you should say what would change it.
Choose the response. The client has little spare capacity, but the sales it lost frees some: $40M at $2.75 a bag is about 14.5M bags. Filling that with private label at $0.50 a bag would add about $7M of gross margin that is otherwise idle. That is an illustration with assumptions (the freed capacity is usable and retailers will buy), not a casebook number.
Where candidates slip. The common slip is to read the falling private label threat only from the headline 20% share. The player-by-player table is the real insight, because it shows the rival profiting from private label while the client loses. Another is asserting a recommendation without stating a threat level first. State the call, the evidence for it and what would change your mind.
Recommendation. Supply private label selectively with freed capacity, protect the brand with a sensible price gap and visible quality, and watch grocer shelf space. Next step: cost the plant's private label floor price and test it with two retailers.
For a consumer goods margin case in the same spirit, try this one.
Work a packaged snacks margin problem
CPGEasy
Casebook case 5: cutting the cost of outsourced engineering
Situation (our wording; facts from casebook case 5). A global construction equipment maker buys a lot of engineering and design work from outside firms and wants to cut that bill. What would you do?
Our approach: size the prize, then net out what it really costs.
Group the levers. Buy less (understand why outside work is needed, standardize requirements across plants), pay less per hour (consolidate and pool volume, negotiate against a cost model), and move the work (offshore, or make versus buy). The supplier data says the base is concentrated, so consolidating the 20 big suppliers is the quick win and offshoring is the large, slower one.
Gross prize. 450,000 hours are still onshore, and moving them from $40 to $15 saves 450,000 x $25 = $11.25M. Today's bill is 450,000 x $40 + 50,000 x $15 = $18.75M, so the rate drops 62.5% on the moved hours.
Hidden costs. Remote work needs more effort: packaging information, writing statements of work, communicating and fixing errors. Two plausible figures are an onsite liaison at 20% of hours priced at $40 (500,000 x 20% x $40 = $4M) and, once the learning curve is climbed, client overhead of 10% (500,000 x 10% x $40 = $2M). Applied to the 450,000 moved hours instead, the first is $3.6M, so state your base. Telecom costs are negligible.
Net. Year one: about $11.25M - $4M = $7.25M, a 39% cut of $18.75M. After the learning curve: about $11.25M - $2M = $9.25M, a 49% cut. These totals are our reading; the casebook gives the two overhead figures without adding them.
What does not fit in a number. A new supplier can cause defects that surface at assembly and in warranty cost, and sharing designs offshore raises intellectual property risk. Propose proxies (defect counts, warranty cost per unit) and a pilot, and weigh political and reputation risk.
Where candidates slip. Quoting the $25 an hour difference as the saving is the first mistake, and applying it to all 500,000 hours is the second, since 50,000 are already offshore. The third is treating quality as unquantifiable and moving on. Offer proxies and a pilot, and an interviewer will see you can handle the part of the problem that is hard to put a number on.
Recommendation. Consolidate suppliers first, then move well-specified, low-IP-risk work offshore in phases, tracking defects and warranty cost through the pilot. At full scale the net saving is roughly $7M to $9M a year, and the quality risk is why not to move everything at once.
Procurement Quick Math
- A packaging category has EUR 90M of annual spend across regional suppliers. Consolidation wins a 12% unit-cost reduction. What is the annual saving, to the nearest EUR 100K?
Saving = Annual spend x negotiated rate reduction. Consolidation leverage shows up as a rate, savings as spend times that rate.
- Consolidating warehouses saves EUR 1.4M of fixed cost a year but requires 20% more safety stock on a EUR 5M base. At a 10% annual carrying-cost assumption, what is the net annual saving?
Net = Fixed-cost saving - (added stock x carrying rate). The service check comes after the number, never instead of it.
- A sole supplier carries a 12% annual chance of a disruption that would lose EUR 4M of contribution. Dual-sourcing adds EUR 0.30 per unit across 800K units and cuts the disruption chance to 3%. Which option costs less per year, and by how much?
Compare expected totals: sole = chance x loss; dual = premium + reduced chance x loss. Decide on cost first, then weigh continuity.
For a make-versus-outsource decision with a location choice, run this case.
Decide whether to outsource supply to Mexico
PharmaceuticalsMedium
Casebook case 6: the written case on shared services and IT
Situation (our wording; facts from casebook case 6). A two year old manufacturing joint venture wants to combine five support functions into one shared services center on a new IT platform and asks for your plan. This is the casebook's final-round presentation case: you prepare slides alone and present with questions inside a 30 minute maximum. The casebook says slides are judged on "organization, approach, rationale and communication skill", not graphics. Use the written case interview guide for the mechanics.
The systems are an old patchwork from one parent, the CFO is under pressure from division heads who run their own support functions, and the divisions say the IT estate is not linked to their growth plans.
Our approach: three slides, the third built on arithmetic.
- The need and the stakes. Legacy systems that barely cope, international operations with different currencies and rules, and divisions ready to go their own way. State the goal in one line: a shared services and IT plan that lifts operating margin from 10% toward 12%.
- The plan. Review growth plans, assess how long the legacy systems will last, run an economic study across scenarios, set criteria for what to outsource and what to keep, design the organization and a project office, and sequence finance and HR first because they carry the most benefit. Avoid convenient assumptions such as "a benchmark study was just done"; state your own and mark them.
- The money and the ceiling. Gross profit is 25% x $4.0B = $1.0B. A 10% operating margin is $0.40B, so operating expense is $0.60B. A 12% margin is $0.48B and $0.52B of expense.
Two points to add when presenting. First, $0.373B is a ceiling: spend more than about $373M and the return on a $56M saving drops below the 15% hurdle. Second, the saving does not close the margin gap. Adding $56M to $400M of profit gives $456M, an 11.4% margin, not 12%. The remaining $24M has to come from the 30% of expense outside the shared services scope, or from gross margin. Say where, instead of letting the 12% claim stand unsupported.
Where candidates slip. A written case rewards a clear answer on page one, not a tour of every issue the packet raises. Common slips are building a plan with no cost ceiling, claiming the 12% margin without showing where all of it comes from, and leaving the outsourcing question as a list of pros and cons. Pick the functions to outsource, give your criteria, and show the numbers on one slide.
Recommendation. Approve a phased program that starts with finance and accounting and HR, caps total investment near $370M, sets up a project office, includes a sourcing review of what to outsource, and retires legacy systems in order of risk. Next steps: validate the saving with a function-by-function cost baseline and identify where the last $24M of the 12% target comes from.
Library case 7: Bumpers R Us, an operations lead-time problem
Prompt. Bumpers R Us is a southeastern U.S. Tier-1 supplier of plastic bumpers to one customer, CNW, shipping 360 miles by truck to CNW's local plant. Lead time has grown over six months. CNW has warned of fines and lost contracts if it does not return to the prior 29 hours. The general manager can spend up to $5M. Find the cause and recommend how to restore lead time.
Clarifying questions. Ask how lead time is measured and what the 29 hours covered, when the increase started, the budget and deadline (the case gives a $5M budget and no date), and whether CNW's demand, part mix or supplier deliveries changed. The case says it has no data on demand or supplier changes yet. That is a gap, not a confirmation that nothing changed.
Structure. Split internal from external causes. Internal: each process stage (time, machines, capacity), machine problems, labor and shifts. External: CNW demand and part mix, suppliers and raw materials, market. Start with the process, since lead time is a sum of stage times.
Exhibit 1 and the math. Molding takes 9 hours (5 machines), painting 16 hours (4 machines), bonding and assembly 6 hours (4 machines), and transport is 360 miles at 60 mph, 6 hours. Add them: 9 + 16 + 6 + 6 = 37 hours, 8 above the prior 29. Painting is the longest stage. Do not divide stage times by machine counts without a capacity model, and do not claim painting caused the increase: the case has no historical stage data.
Exhibit 2 and the choice. Five options with time saved and one-time cost, assumed additive:
Cost
Test combinations under $5M. Replace plus software: 3 + 5 = 8 hours for $3.5M + $1.5M = $5.0M, so lead time returns to 29 hours exactly. Software plus outsourcing gets to 30 hours for $3.5M. Replace plus outsourcing costs $5.5M. Adding a robot uses the whole budget for 4 hours. Every other pair or triple either costs more than $5M or saves fewer than 8 hours (software plus outsourcing saves 7). Only replace plus software meets both limits.
Recommendation. Replace the oldest paint-line robot and upgrade the paint software: it uses the entire $5M and restores 29 hours. It leaves no cost buffer and no time buffer, so the risks are cost overruns, installation downtime and combined performance being less than the sum of the parts. Next steps: get competing quotes, confirm the installation plan keeps deliveries running, and validate the combined effect before spending the full amount. A pilot plan with CNW on interim delivery commitments is the implementation detail a Kearney interviewer would push for.
You can run this case yourself with an AI interviewer from the Bumpers R Us case page, where it asks the lead-time and option questions out loud.
Run the Bumpers R Us lead-time case
Automotive ManufacturingMedium
Library case 8: Discount Retailer, a profitability decline
Prompt. A discount clothing retailer operating only in the U.S. and Canada has seen profitability decline over the two years to 2017. Diagnose the cause and recommend a turnaround.
Clarifying questions. Confirm the profit measure (gross, operating or net), the period (2015 to 2017), whether the decline is concentrated in particular stores, regions or categories, and whether competitors show the same trend. The case has no store count, no investment budget and no target, so say that your recommendation will be conditional on them.
Questions to the CMO and what comes back. Market share fell from 70% to 60%; there are three major competitors and no new entrants; there is no customer demographic shift, but customers are moving from cities to suburbs while the client's stores are in cities; same-store sales fell; there is no new product innovation or change in brand perception. If those are revenue shares, the market grew about 5% (from about $286M to $300M) while the client shrank, so the client lost share rather than being hit by a falling market. The exhibit does not say what the shares measure, so treat that as conditional.
Questions to the CFO and the math. 2015 revenue was $200M at a 40% gross margin, so gross profit was $80M and COGS $120M. From 2015 to 2017 volume fell 10%, price did not change, total COGS rose 30%, and fixed costs did not change. Wholesale prices rose and volume rebates fell.
- 2017 revenue: $200M x 0.9 = $180M.
- 2017 COGS: $120M x 1.3 = $156M.
- 2017 gross profit: $180M - $156M = $24M, down $56M, or 70%. The gross margin falls from 40% to 13.3% ($24M / $180M).
- COGS per unit: the $156M now buys 90% of the old volume, so cost per unit is $156M / 0.9 = $173.3M on the old $120M scale, up 44%.
Separate the two forces. The lost volume costs $8M of gross profit at the old margin (10% of $80M). The remaining $48M is cost inflation: $156M of COGS against the $108M the lower volume would have cost at 2015 unit costs. Cost, not demand, is most of the damage.
Recommendation. Fix purchasing first and the store base second. Every 10% saved on today's COGS is $15.6M, so purchasing alone would need a 36% saving to recover the full $56M, which is unlikely. So combine: renegotiate wholesale terms, consolidate suppliers to win back volume rebates, and rationalize slow SKUs, then address the footprint, with smaller suburban formats or e-commerce for the customers who left the cities, and a review of underperforming city stores. Next steps: store level profit data, supplier cost and rebate history, and customer location data. No savings or investment figures are supplied, so size each lever before committing.
Profitability bridge Quick Math
- Revenue is flat at $400M. The variable cost ratio rises 5 percentage points. What is the profit decline, in dollars?
With revenue flat, Profit decline = Revenue x Percentage-point change in the cost ratio.
- Revenue is $600M and COGS is $384M. What is gross margin, in percent? Round to the nearest whole percent.
Gross margin = (Revenue - COGS) / Revenue.
- Profit declines from $72M to $54M. What is the percentage decline? Round to the nearest 0.1%.
Percent decline = (Starting profit - Ending profit) / Starting profit.
You can run this case with an AI interviewer from the Discount Retailer case page.
What does each Kearney practice case train?
Each case trains a distinct skill, so work them by weakness, not in order. The last column names a related case in the library for a live rep.
If you have a Kearney interview coming and limited time, the pattern across all eight is the same. The math is short but it has a catch (a base, a rounding, an inventory line, a hidden cost, a ceiling), and the recommendation has to name the catch. Practise saying the base and the assumption out loud before you calculate.
What kinds of math do candidates report in Kearney cases?
Candidates and coaches report operational math: cost per unit, capacity, lead time and working capital, plus break-even, ROI and CAGR. Kearney does not publish a list, so these are reported, not official. A coach on PrepLounge (May 14, 2026, advising on the Paris first round) wrote that the math leans operational and named the first four. The case-prep.com guide (2026, no author shown) names break-even, ROI and CAGR as the math to drill. Each type has a rep on this page.
The break-even row is the closest fit we have: it asks how big a saving must be to recover a loss, not a classic fixed cost versus price point. Practise those separately if your invitation mentions them. Say the base out loud each time, such as hours, bags or the five years between 2005 and 2010, because that is where these numbers usually go wrong.
Which Kearney pages should you read alongside this one?
Use the Kearney case interview guide for the round-by-round process, the five case types and the six week plan, and Kearney behavioral interview questions for the fit side. Before applying, see the Kearney resume, Kearney cover letter and Kearney internship pages, and Kearney salary and what Kearney is like to work for for the offer. For the skills the cases lean on, the operations case interview page, the supply chain case interview page and the cost reduction case interview page go deeper than this one.
Turn this guide into a Kearney plan
Sources and further reading (checked November 5, 2026)
- Kearney careers, case example: promotional planning (the five-step method, the case facts and Kearney's answer guidelines; page dated September 5, 2024): https://www.kearney.com/careers/interviewing/crack-the-case/case-example-promotion-planning
- Kearney careers, Interviewing (accommodations statement only when read as text): https://www.kearney.com/careers/interviewing
- A.T. Kearney, Consulting Case Book and Tips for Interviewing (six sample cases and answer guides; undated, written after January 2006; hosted copy linked from Hacking the Case Interview): https://s3.amazonaws.com/thinkific/file_uploads/163260/attachments/cf9/d83/ecd/AT_Kearney_Casebook.pdf
- PrepLounge forum, First round interview at Kearney (coach replies dated May 10 to 25, 2026; one coach names the math types and sectors for the Paris office): https://www.preplounge.com/consulting-forum/first-round-interview-at-kearney-24839
- case-prep.com, Kearney case interview guide (updated 2026, no author or date shown; names break-even, ROI and CAGR as math to drill): https://www.case-prep.com/firms/kearney
- Hacking the Case Interview, Kearney case interview guide (coach, updated July 6, 2026; candidate-reported format, written case and case types): https://www.hackingthecaseinterview.com/pages/at-kearney-case-interview-prep
- CaseStar, Kearney analyst interview (updated June 2026; candidate-led, operations focus): https://www.casestar.io/interviews/kearney/analyst
- MConsultingPrep, Kearney case interview guide (written case timing as a third data point): https://mconsultingprep.com/kearney-case-interview
- PrepLounge forum, What is the interviewing format at Kearney? (March and April 2020 replies from coaches, one a self-described Kearney consultant): https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/guidance-request-what-is-the-interviewing-format-at-kearney-6341
- Road to Offer case library, Bumpers R Us and Discount Retailer case content (exhibits and answer keys): https://www.roadtooffer.com/case-library
Frequently asked questions
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