Blog · Industry
Which component has one qualified source and no second. Which site depends on a single supplier for a third of its inbound. Which supplier's on-time rate has slipped for three months. From the purchase ledger, receipts and the supplier master, supplier IDs only.
How a supply chain team measures demand forecast accuracy and bias per SKU per site from the forecast snapshots and the actual demand: error and signed bias, the SKU-site pairs that are consistently over-forecast and carry the excess stock, the ones consistently under-forecast and carry the stock-outs, why bias at one site is usually a planner's override, and the adjustment the team's own history supports.
16 Sept 20263 min readHow a supply chain team reads inventory ageing per SKU per site from the stock and movement files: days since last issue, value in each ageing band, the sites where aged stock concentrates, the SKUs aged at one site and moving at another, the transfer that releases the cash, the write-down exposure at stated bands, and the identity that aged plus moving stock equals the inventory ledger.
16 Sept 20263 min readHow a supply chain team measures actual lead time and its variability per supplier per site per item from purchase orders and receipts, why the spread drives safety stock more than the mean, the suppliers whose variability rose while their average held, and the inventory that a tighter supplier or a corrected lead time parameter would release.
16 Sept 20263 min readHow a supply chain team turns receipt and purchase order data into an on-time-in-full figure per supplier per site, why the trend matters more than the level, the three-month rule that separates a bad month from a deteriorating supplier, and the watch list that goes to the category manager.
16 Sept 20262 min readHow a supply chain team finds single-source parts, measures inbound concentration by supplier per site and watches supplier performance trends from goods receipts and the supplier master, with the reconciliation to goods received that makes the exposure figure defensible.
16 Sept 20263 min readThe ten questions a COO puts to the supply chain and service functions, which suppliers are deteriorating, where is single-source risk, what is the lead time really, where is inventory ageing, which sites are short and which are long, is the demand plan biased, what are we paying early for nothing, which accounts consume the most service, are we meeting the SLAs we signed, and what changed, each with the computed table, the identity behind it, and the answer a COO should send back.
16 Sept 20263 min readHow supply chain teams should choose analytics software: start from the questions, check the data you hold, ask vendors ten questions, avoid the traps.
24 Sept 20264 min readThe ten KPIs a supply chain function should run on, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you: supplier OTIF against each supplier's own baseline, lead time variability, customer OTIF under each customer's rule, forecast bias by SKU and site, inventory ageing, single-source exposure, days of cover against target, expedite cost, supplier deterioration watch, and cause of service misses. Also the three measures most teams miss, the figures to drop, the identities, and who owns what.
17 Sept 20264 min readThe complete on-time-in-full calculation on ten purchase order lines from two suppliers to two sites, small enough to check by hand: the confirmed due date and the tolerance window, the receipt date and quantity, on time and in full per line, the over-receipt that fails the assertion, OTIF per supplier and per supplier-site, why the supplier figure hides the site, the three-month trend that makes a watch list, and the identity that receipts join to lines, so a reader can reproduce every figure and then run it on their own exports.
17 Sept 20263 min readOTIF, fill rate and on-time delivery are three delivery measures that are reported as if they were one. On-time delivery tests the date only. Fill rate tests the quantity only, and comes in line, case and order versions. OTIF requires both on the same order. This page sets out the definitions, computes all of them on the same ten order lines, shows why OTIF is always the lowest, and explains which one a retailer's scorecard and chargebacks are based on.
17 Sept 20264 min readSupplier concentration and continuity analytics for supply chain teams.
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