Tag
stockouts
Production-planning notes filed under stockouts.
- 01
OTIF Starts on the Line: Scheduling to the Must-Arrive-By Date
OTIF is a retailer-compliance scorecard that grades whether you delivered the right product, in full, on the must-arrive-by date. It's a scheduling problem before it's a logistics one — here's how to build a schedule that survives it.
Read post - 02
Why MAPE Lies About Your CPG Forecast: MAPE vs. WMAPE vs. MASE
MAPE is the default forecast accuracy metric on most CPG teams — and it quietly lies whenever demand is small or hits zero. Here's why, plus when to use WMAPE, MASE, and MAAPE instead.
Read post - 03
Available-to-Promise for CPG Lines: Quote Ship Dates From Your Schedule, Not Your Gut
A buyer wants 40 pallets by Thursday. Available-to-promise (ATP) is the discipline that lets you answer from your master schedule instead of guessing — without double-booking a line or robbing the next customer's allocation.
Read post - 04
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 - 05
Forecast Value Added: Is Your Demand Override Beating a Naive Guess?
Forecast Value Added audits your forecasting process step by step, proving whether each analyst override actually beats a dumb naive benchmark. Here's how to run FVA on a CPG line—and why a failed override is really a scheduling error.
Read post - 06
The Bullwhip Effect on Your CPG Line: Why a 5% Shelf Wobble Becomes a Whipsawing Schedule
Your inbound order signal swings harder than consumers actually buy. That jumpiness is a structural amplification called the bullwhip effect. Here's how to name it, measure it, and dampen it from the plant floor.
Read post - 07
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 - 08
Little's Law for CPG Schedulers: Predict Line Lead Time from WIP and Throughput
The line is running at rate, yet orders keep shipping late. Little's Law explains why: lead time is WIP divided by throughput. Learn to predict flow time, cap queues, and quote promise dates you can keep.
Read post - 09
The 100% Utilization Trap: Why a Fully Booked CPG Line Is Your Slowest Line
Loading a line to 98% of available hours looks efficient, but queue time explodes as you approach 100% utilization. Here's the math behind the trap and where to set your utilization ceiling.
Read post - 10
Tracking Signal: Catch a Biased Forecast Before It Corrupts Your Schedule
A forecast rarely fails loudly — it drifts. Learn how the tracking signal, a cheap MAD-based trip-wire, flags persistent forecast bias so you can fix it before it inflates run sizes or triggers repeat stockouts.
Read post - 11
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 - 12
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.
Read post