Tag
safety stock
Production-planning notes filed under safety stock.
- 01
Sizing Safety Stock for Lead-Time Variability: King's Combined Formula
Most schedulers buffer only demand swings and silently assume a punctual supplier. Learn King's combined safety-stock formula, run a CPG worked example, and see when a late supplier—not your forecast—drives the stockout.
Read post - 02
The Decoupling Point: Where Your CPG Line Should Stop Making to Forecast and Start Making to Order
Every CPG line runs two scheduling worlds at once: forecast-driven push upstream and order-driven pull downstream. The customer order decoupling point decides where one ends and the other begins — and where you hold your inventory.
Read post - 03
The Variability Tax: Why Kingman's Equation Says Lumpy Demand Costs More Than a Busy Line
Utilization is only one of three dials that set queue time on a CPG line. Kingman's formula shows why demand lumpiness and erratic changeovers act as a pure multiplier on wait time — and how to attack it without adding capacity.
Read post - 04
Continuous vs. Periodic Review: Why CPG Lines Reorder on a Clock, Not a Trigger
A continuous-review reorder point assumes you can produce the instant you cross it. A shared CPG line can't. Here's why periodic review and order-up-to targets model your floor honestly — and why the review gap quietly inflates your safety stock.
Read post - 05
Croston's Method for Intermittent SKUs: Forecasting the Slow Movers Your Average Keeps Getting Wrong
Standard moving averages and exponential smoothing quietly mis-forecast your sporadic SKUs. Croston's method forecasts demand size and demand interval separately — here's how it works, when to use SBA or TSB, and how to decide which SKUs need it.
Read post - 06
The Newsvendor Model: How Much to Make for a One-Shot CPG Run
Holiday packs, LTOs, and short-code items give you exactly one shot at the run quantity. The newsvendor model turns overage-vs-underage costs into a defensible batch size using one number: the critical ratio.
Read post - 07
Cycle Service Level vs. Fill Rate: The Service Metric That Sizes Your Safety Stock
Setting "95% service" means nothing until you know which 95%. Learn how cycle service level and fill rate differ, why they diverge, and how each one sizes your safety stock and run cadence.
Read post - 08
Shelf-Life-Constrained Production Scheduling: Sizing Runs So Perishable SKUs Don't Expire
Classic lot-sizing math quietly assumes product lives forever. In food and beverage it doesn't. Here's how to cap production runs at the shelf-life-feasible quantity so perishable SKUs sell before they expire — without stocking out.
Read post - 09
Time Fences for CPG Schedulers: Where to Freeze, Where to Flex
Schedule nervousness thrashes the floor when every late change rebuilds the week. Learn how to divide your planning horizon into frozen, slushy, and liquid zones, size the freeze to your cumulative lead time, and enforce the rules that keep the plan stable.
Read post - 10
ABC-XYZ Segmentation for CPG: Which SKUs Deserve Tight Scheduling and Safety Stock
You can't manage 400 SKUs the same way. Learn how ABC-XYZ segmentation ranks SKUs by dollar impact and demand variability, so you spend scheduling attention and safety stock where they actually pay off.
Read post - 11
Stop firefighting stockouts
A stockout is rarely a surprise — it's a slow signal nobody had time to read. Read the few signals that matter early, and the fixes stay cheap.
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