Supply Chain Trade-Offs
Why every fix shows up somewhere else on the scorecard
Nobody argues for worse service or higher cost. The argument is always about which one gives way first, and that argument is usually had with each side holding a different number. Cost sees freight and inventory. Commercial sees fill rate. Finance sees the cash tied up in both.
This puts all of it on one screen. Move any one measure and every other measure moves with it, through weights you can read and change. Nothing here is hidden in a spreadsheet tab — the ninety-five assumptions behind it are all listed further down, and every one is a slider.
Pull a lever, watch the rest move
Drag any dimension. Every other gauge reacts through the weighted trade-off model, then those reactions ripple one more step. Select a dimension to open its underlying metrics.
What you gain, what you give up
Bars sit left or right by whether the metric got better or worse, not by whether its number went up or down. A rising cost counts as a loss, so it sits on the left. If bars land on both sides, you are looking at a real trade-off.
Nothing moved yet.
Position
50All six axes point the same way: further out is better. Cost and complexity are shown as cost control and simplicity, so a bigger shape always means a stronger position.
Detail
The operational measures that roll up into the dimension you selected.
Trade-off weights
How hard one metric pushes another. Positive moves them together, negative moves them apart. Search to find a link fast — with ninety-five of them, scrolling is not a plan.
Notes
How the dimensions interact
Improving one dimension usually costs you somewhere else. Each link is an assumption you can argue with and change — that is the point of the weights panel.
Key relationships
- Cost buys service through expedited freight, capacity and inventory, and spends cash and efficiency to do it
- Service needs inventory and infrastructure behind it, so cost follows service up
- Resilience comes from redundancy and buffers: better service, more complexity, more cost
- Efficiency pulls cost and complexity down and frees cash, but rewards a frozen plan over a flexible one
- Complexity adds changeovers and specs, which raises cost and cuts run efficiency, though alternates can aid resilience
- Cash improves by cutting inventory and stretching payables, which squeezes service unless agility absorbs it
Scenarios
Efficiency drive — lower cost and complexity release working capital.
Supplier disruption — resilience collapses first, then service, and cost rises to defend it.
Cash crunch — stretch vendor terms, cut stock, accept the service hit.
Nine weights corrected
The original model had sign errors clustered in the cash cycle. Cash is
defined as cash health, so a higher value means faster conversion — but the
links treated it as if higher meant more days tied up.
Changed
Cash ↔ Cash Conversion Cycle was the worst of it: both directions were
positive, so improving cash raised CCC, which raised cash again — a runaway loop
pointing the wrong way.
Every one of these is a slider in the weights panel. Restore defaults reloads the corrected set, not the original.