The Millson Group → 901 Partners
901 Partners is an operations and analytics partner for small and mid-size businesses. We forecast demand, size inventory, schedule production, and stand up the data all three run on.
Our sweet spot is $5M to $50M in revenue. Big enough that the numbers matter, small enough that one good decision moves them. We have also done this for startups and for organizations over $1B.
We build the models with you, hand you ownership, and stay until the improvement is real. On some of our best engagements we were the fourth consultant through the door, and the only one who stayed long enough to move the number.
What we do
Each one comes with something working on this site that you can click through yourself, including the forecasting platform we use with clients.
No signup, no video, no call first.
Know what you are going to sell before you sell it, and find out how far off that number is while there is still time to act.
Open the platform →
02 · LIVE DEMOHold less stock and still have what people order. Both at once, because both come back to the same thing: nobody ever set the rules for how much to buy and when.
Run a buy plan →
03 · LIVE DEMOThe order you make things in decides how much of the day you lose to switching between jobs. Change the order and you get hours back, without buying anything.
Sequence a shift →
04 · LIVE DASHBOARDSEvery system's numbers in one place, so meetings are about the decision instead of about whose report is right. You own it.
Explore the dashboards →
What changed
Cash freed up. Orders arriving on time. Product that stops going out of date. Six engagements, and what each one was worth to the business that paid for it.
Figures as reported by the client at the close of each engagement. 100% of our customers say they would recommend us to a colleague. Their words are on that page too.
Why 901
The old name was one person's surname. This one belongs to everybody who works here. More about us →
It might be inventory, or lead times, or margin. It might be that you cannot get at the data to answer the question at all. Either is a good place to start. The first conversation is free, and we will tell you if we are the wrong firm for it.
Services
A forecast is only as good as the sales history feeding it. A buy plan is only as good as the forecast. A production schedule is only as good as the buy plan. Get the data right and the other three get easier.
Start anywhere below. Everything you can click through runs on an invented pet accessories brand, so none of it is a client's data.
Most forecasts tell you what they think will happen. Ours also tells you how wrong it has been lately.
Underneath, it does what any good forecast does: it looks at how much you normally sell, whether that is climbing or falling, and how your year is shaped. Then it does the part most tools skip. It checks its own recent misses, works out which way it has been leaning, and corrects the next month before the month is over. A normal forecast finds out it was wrong a quarter later. This one finds out now.
Below is the platform itself. No login, nothing switched off. Start on Dashboard for forecast versus actuals with rolling accuracy and bias. Top-Down and Bottom-Up build a forecast from opposite directions, New SKUs handles products with no history, and BOM Demand blows it through to components. First load takes a few seconds while the server wakes.
Hold less stock and still have what people order. Both, not one at the cost of the other.
Almost every business we meet has too much of the wrong thing and not enough of the right thing at the same time. That is not a buying problem, it is that nobody ever set the rules: how much cover each item needs, and when to order more. Below, decide how often you want to have things in stock and how much cash you can put into it, and watch which orders survive.
How often a customer gets exactly what they ordered. 100% is ruinously expensive.
What suppliers actually deliver against what the system assumes.
The constraint nobody models. When it binds, something has to give.
| SKU | Fcst / mo | Safety | ROP | Buy | Spend | Status |
|---|
Average inventory at every half-point of service level. Flat to about 95%, then a wall.
Green is fully funded, teal is trimmed by the cash ceiling, red is deferred to next cycle.
The order you build things in is worth hours a day.
Every time the line switches from one job to the next, somebody cleans something, swaps something, and waits. Run similar jobs together and most of that disappears. The catch is that ten jobs can be run in three million different orders, so planners fall back on habit, and habit is expensive. Drag the jobs below into whatever order you like, then let the computer try to beat you.
Sequence · drag to reorder
Keyboard: focus a job, hold Alt with up or down.
The production block
Synthetic data, not a client schedule. The optimizer runs nearest-neighbour from every start, then 2-opt. It is the same approach as the scheduler we built in Python for a door manufacturer, which runs against their live order book daily and took on-time delivery from 54% to 97%.
This is the centre. Everything above reads from it.
We pull the numbers out of every system you run: the ERP, the till, the spreadsheets somebody keeps on their desktop. Then we make them agree with each other and keep them in one place, set up under your account rather than ours. If you fire us on a Friday, everything still runs on Monday.
Hover anything for detail. Click any bar, slice or bubble and every other panel filters to it.
Monthly, with a twelve-month moving average
Flips to channel once a family is selected
Within the current selection
Year over year
| SKU | 12 mo | YoY | Change |
|---|
Year over year
| SKU | 12 mo | YoY | Change |
|---|
Cover against demand, sized by inventory value
Cycle stock versus safety stock, at cost
Thinnest cover first
| SKU | Fcst / mo | Cover | ROP | Buy | Spend | Position |
|---|
D3 running in your browser on generated data. In an engagement this is Power BI or Tableau against your warehouse, but the rule is the same: a few views tied to recurring decisions, and every visual filters every other one.
Tell us which of these sounds like your business, or where the data runs out before it answers the question. The first conversation is free.
Case studies
Not what we delivered. What was different afterwards: cash freed up, orders arriving on time, product that stopped going out of date.
Every figure was reported by the client at the close of the engagement. Names are off because this work touches numbers our clients would rather not publish. Ask for a reference in your sector and we will put you on the phone with one.
Selected results
Six engagements. Different mechanism every time, same point: find the money already sitting in the business and go get it.
The two largest engagements, drawn to the same scale
$15M inventory reductionPlus a $20M reduction in backorders, same year
Cutting stock usually means more backorders. Clearing backorders usually means more stock. This company was told to pick one. We rebuilt how the whole catalogue was forecast and reordered, and got $35M out of the two problems at once.
Forecast rebuild across the full catalogue, then the reorder rules underneath it.
$32M inventory reductionAcross seven plants, in six months
Each site had its own view of what to hold and its own idea of what the part numbers meant, so the group carried seven safety nets for one risk. We got them onto one set of records and one way of planning.
Master data cleaned up first, then a single planning process across all seven sites.
On-time delivery54% to 97%
The plant built things in whatever order the paperwork landed, losing hours a day switching the line between jobs. We changed the order the jobs run in. The tool that decides it runs against their live order book every day.
A production scheduler built in Python, handed over and still running.
Kitted parts lead time12 weeks to 1 week
A kit only ships when its last part arrives, and nobody was watching which part that was. Once the few parts holding everything up were visible and planned for, three months of waiting collapsed into a week.
Same engagement as the scheduling work above.
$300K reduction in systems costSoftware they no longer had to buy
They were about to sign for a product configurator. We built one that fit how they actually sell, handed over the code, and the annual licence never started. They own it outright.
Built in-house, transferred on delivery, no ongoing fee to us or anyone else.
$180K reduction in expiry lossProduct that stopped going out of date
Sales and operations were planning to two different numbers, and the gap between them became product nobody sold in time. We put one monthly rhythm in place for both, plus a real process for launching something new.
Sales and operations planning, and new-product introduction, stood up from scratch.
Figures as reported by the client at the close of each engagement. We have worked with startups and with organizations over $1B, across food and beverage, consumer goods, medical devices, building products and insurance.
In their words
Asked to compare us with other consulting firms, they came back with the same three words: more cost effective, more valuable, more data driven.
Process and systems focused…developing actionable insights. Willingness to roll up the sleeves and truly partner with business leaders.
Bill MuirFounding Partner, Steadfast Partners Professional and astute business partner…distills complex business issues into succinct and tangible solutions…pleasure and joy to work with.
Analyzed our processes and provided valuable insights to optimize inventory management and POS system. Constructed a robust forecasting platform… [creating] accurate communication with our vendors and suppliers.
Julianna VoylesSenior Director of Franchise Operations, Jeremiah’s Italian Ice Want a reference in your own sector? Ask, and we will arrange the call.
Tell us where your numbers stop making sense, or where you cannot get the data to answer the question at all. The first conversation is free.
About
That has been the mission statement since day one, and it is deliberately unglamorous.
We embed inside small and mid-size businesses to fix the operational problems quietly costing them profitability: inventory planning, supply chain, and financial performance. Mostly for manufacturers, consumer packaged goods companies, and multi-location retail and restaurant groups.
Every solution starts from your requirements, or we are solving a problem you do not have. And it does not end at the recommendation. We implement, execute, and prove the thing works before calling it done.
Our people
There is no bench behind us, and no analyst you have never met doing the modelling.
Partners
Sam has spent his career learning how global supply chains work, then writing the code to make them work better. His combination of innovative development and a collaborative mindset has produced consistent savings everywhere he has been.
He has worked for Universal Studios, Textron and Smith & Nephew, and for restaurants small enough to know every supplier by name. At Smith & Nephew he managed the global data and analytics team, building the standards and dashboards the business ran on. He has also worked a manufacturing floor, improving lean operations and daily throughput.
Sam has driven to 48 states and run marathons since competing at Georgia Tech in cross country and track. He graduated from Georgia Tech with highest honours in Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Noah joined 901 Partners in September 2024 to accelerate the firm's growth while keeping it honest about what being a true partner means.
He has worked with S&P 500 companies including International Paper and Smith + Nephew, improving their forecasting, order management and inventory optimization. He has also worked with startups and smaller businesses on business plans and the KPIs that make growth sustainable. Knowing both the strategy and the execution is what lets him create value for clients.
Noah lives in Denver, where he takes full advantage of the outdoors. He travels, volunteers in his community, and seeks out people from backgrounds unlike his own. He graduated from the University of South Carolina in Supply Chain and Finance, with a concentration in data analytics.
Team
Ian joined 901 Partners in August 2026 as Director of Data Solutions, where he leads the design and delivery of data infrastructure for the firm's clients.
Born and raised in Sarasota, Florida, Ian studied Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. His work at Sun Hydraulics, TechSage RERC, KMC Stampings and Nicor Gas gave him a hands-on understanding of how manufacturing and utilities companies actually run, and how stronger data management and intelligence lead to better business decisions. Building sustainable data infrastructure and untangling complex problems is what energizes him, and it is the mindset he brings to every 901 engagement.
Ian lives in Chicago, where he plays volleyball, spends time with friends, and games. Especially League of Legends.
What makes us different
Things we have watched go wrong elsewhere, and refuse to repeat.
We do not advise and exit. We build with you, transfer ownership of everything we create, and stay until the improvement is real. The explicit intention is that you outgrow us.
The name
A surname is an accurate name for a one-person firm. We are not one any more.
Same team, same work. Only the sign on the door changed, in September 2026.
Careers
We are small, so an intern here is not shadowing anybody. You will own pieces of live client work, your code will run against real data, and you will present findings to the people who paid for them.
We expect to add a full-time position later this year. If that is what you are after, tell us anyway.
Helps but not required: Power BI or Tableau, Git, exposure to an ERP, or a prior internship on a plant floor, in a warehouse, or in a restaurant.
Email [email protected] with your résumé and a few sentences on one time you used data to change somebody's mind: what the data said, what they believed before, and what happened.
No cover letter. We read every application ourselves and reply to all of them, including the ones we pass on.
901 Partners is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.
Nothing here that fits? If you have spent time in supply chain, manufacturing operations, ERP implementation or analytics, send a note to [email protected] and tell us what you would want to work on. We keep those.
Contact
Inventory, lead times, margin, overtime, a forecast nobody trusts. Or the one underneath all of them: you cannot get at the data to answer the question in the first place.
The first conversation costs nothing. If we are the wrong firm for the problem we will say so on that call.