Choose when the replenishment decision can occur

Map the actual decision opportunity

MIT’s 2014 inventory lecture contrasts periodic and continuous review and includes review time plus lead time in its periodic base-stock horizon.

Ask when the organization can make an effective replenishment decision, not merely when a dashboard refreshes. Identify who reviews the information, who has authority to act and which supplier or internal process can accept the request. A notification that arrives quickly may still wait for an approval meeting or a scheduled collection.

Draw the existing operating calendar with closures, approval availability and known submission boundaries. Distinguish a genuine constraint from a habit that the owner might choose to change. Do not assume that a new alert removes either one. The deliverable begins with a credible operating arrangement, not a preferred software feature.

Show the additional exposure explicitly

Fictional schedule: review every 7 days, receipt 3 days later, demand 10 units daily. Seven plus three gives 10 days; ten times ten gives 100 expected units. Lead time alone gives 30. Neither figure includes safety stock.

Place those results on the calendar so a reviewer can see what the quantities represent. State the assumed daily pattern and the receipt timing rather than presenting the larger result as a universal requirement. The illustration is deliberately simple; an actual operation may have uneven demand, closures or unreliable receipts requiring a qualified planner’s model.

Ask what happens to a request arriving just after the scheduled review. Follow it through the actual approval and supplier process. This boundary case often reveals whether the proposed calendar describes real decision opportunities or merely the time someone prefers to run a report. Keep the resulting observation separate from the simplified arithmetic.

Compare feasible arrangements rather than labels

Consider two possible operating arrangements. One combines routine decisions into a staffed weekly review with clear exception ownership. Another permits authorized action when relevant changes are detected. Compare who must be available, what information they need and whether the supplier can respond. Neither arrangement is inherently suitable simply because it sounds more automated or more disciplined.

Identify the work that each arrangement creates. More frequent attention may require reliable records and clear authority; a scheduled discussion may improve coordination but leave urgent exceptions requiring another route. Estimate that work using the organization’s own process evidence. Do not claim that installing a dashboard creates planning capacity.

If an exception route is proposed, state which situations qualify and who approves its use. An informal promise that someone will handle emergencies is not an operating design. Keep any purchasing authority, supplier commitment and system change outside the worksheet until separately approved.

Agree the calendar before setting policy parameters

Have the inventory and procurement owners confirm the feasible decision calendar. Give the qualified planner the agreed arrangement, relevant demand evidence and unresolved timing issues. The planner can then evaluate suitable parameters under the actual assumptions rather than designing a policy around opportunities the team cannot use.

Record the reasons for the selected arrangement and the conditions that would make it unsuitable. Examples include a material change in supplier acceptance windows, staffing or the product’s operational importance. These are review triggers, not instructions to alter stock or place orders automatically.

After an authorized trial, compare the intended decision times with what actually happened. Distinguish late information, delayed approval and supplier inability to respond. Fixing the wrong stage can make reports more frequent without improving the operation. Keep the calendar and its accountable owners current so the plan remains a usable agreement rather than a diagram left behind after implementation.

Make the reasoning concrete.

A fictional distributor proposes continuous alerts while its purchasing team and supplier still process routine requests once a week. The operations lead asks what decision the new alert would actually enable.

The distributor approves a planning brief for evaluation, not a software change or a supplier commitment.

Take the questions into your next brief.

Use these prompts in your own notes. Nothing is submitted from this page.

1. Opportunity

   When can an authorized decision actually take effect?

2. Calendar

   Which closures and acceptance boundaries matter?

3. Boundary

   What happens just after a scheduled review?

4. Work

   Who can perform the required review and response?

5. Trigger

   Which change would require reconsidering the arrangement?

Watch for the wrong conclusion.

• Confusing data refresh with authority to act.
• Assuming an exception route exists because somebody has a phone.
• Setting policy parameters before agreeing the operating arrangement.

Sources & scope

Original operational reasoning and explicitly fictional numerical fixtures. Source-derived definitions and mathematical applications remain attributed. Qualified owners decide real policy and purchasing. No account changes, purchase, stock movement or deployment occurs.

• MIT D-Lab: Inventory Management, Part II, 22 October 2014 →Primary technical documentation · Supports: Supports the review-policy distinction and horizon.