Written by supply chain practitioners who have spent their careers running operations and the technology behind them. No vendor spin and no textbook recitals. Just metrics, trade-offs and tools as they behave in the real world, not in the demo.
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DIFOT & delivery performance
What a good score actually is, how to calculate it honestly, and how teams game it once the target has a bonus attached.
Forecast accuracy & bias
MAPE, WAPE, bias and forecast value add, plus the incentive problems underneath the numbers that no algorithm will fix.
AI in the supply chain
Agentic AI, AI forecasting, control towers and digital twins, reality checked by people who have lived the implementations.
Latest articles
- When Your LTL Carrier Raises Rates Mid-Peak-Season: The Absorption vs. Negotiation Framework (Effective October 5)Old Dominion’s 4.9% general rate increase takes effect October 5, 2026, inside peak. Whether it hits your freight depends on how your pricing is built, and for most shippers the sound move is to absorb on critical lanes, negotiate where volume gives weight, and hold any carrier switch until after peak.
- Supplier Audit Checklist for Buyers: What Procurement Can Check Without a Quality EngineerWhat a procurement buyer can verify in a supplier audit without a quality engineer, from free pre-visit desk checks and the plant walk to the trace drill, which findings disqualify, and when to call a specialist.
- What Is a Good DIFOT Score? Honest Benchmarks (and Their Fine Print)Above 90% is workable and 95% is genuinely good, but only if the measurement rules match. Honest DIFOT benchmarks by industry, the fine print behind retail targets, and how to set your own.
- MAE vs RMSE: Why Your Model Optimizes One Number and Your KPI Reports AnotherMAE aims a forecast at the median of demand, RMSE at the mean. A worked example where the two pick different winners, what the RMSE-to-MAE ratio tells you, and which metric to report.
- Forecast Bias: The Formula, the Sign Trap, and When It Beats Chasing AccuracyForecast bias is the sum of actuals minus the sum of forecast, divided by the sum of forecast. The formula, the four sign conventions that disagree with each other, a worked example, and the bias ratio that tells bias from noise.
- How Teams Game DIFOT (and How to Design a Score They Can’t)Teams game DIFOT by re-promising dates, padding lead times, splitting orders, loosening tolerances, growing the exclusion list and measuring at their own dock. Here is what each tactic hides from the customer, and the audit that catches it.
Who we are
We are operators, planners and systems people. Most of the industry’s bad advice comes from the gap between those jobs. The people who know the tech have never run a warehouse, and the people who have run a warehouse rarely know the tech. We have done both, and this site exists to say the things certification bodies and software vendors can’t.