You don’t make it. You still have to promise it.
Thin margins, high SKU counts, supplier lead times you do not control, and customers who judge you entirely on whether the order arrived complete and on time. Every point of OTIF is worth real money and every point of excess inventory costs it back.
Industrial distribution · Building and construction supply · Electrical and MRO · Food service distribution · Healthcare and lab supply · Aftermarket parts
Where the decision stalls.
Stockouts and excess at the same time
The classic distribution signature. Working capital tied up in the wrong SKUs while the fast movers go short, because replenishment runs on rules set two years ago.
Supplier reliability is known but not modeled
Every buyer knows which vendors slip. That knowledge lives in their head and in a personal spreadsheet, and it does not reach the replenishment calculation.
Branch-level demand is invisible at the center
Regional demand shifts show up in the aggregate weeks after the branch felt them, so transfers happen late and in the wrong direction.
Order promising is a phone call
Available-to-promise is a static number that ignores what is already committed and what is inbound, so the promise gets made and then negotiated afterward.
One story: a fast mover going short across three branches
Demand for a high-volume SKU shifts regionally. Two branches are heading for a stockout inside ten days; a third is sitting on nine weeks of cover. The replenishment buy has a lead time longer than the gap, so the answer is a transfer — and the question is which branch gives it up.
Internal Demand Sensing
Detects the regional shift at branch level as it happens, rather than after it clears the aggregate forecast.
Multi-Echelon Inventory Optimization
Costs the transfer options across the network against service targets and freight, and returns the reposition that protects the most revenue per dollar moved.
Capable-to-Promise
Re-answers what can actually be committed, net of the transfer and what is already promised, so the sales team quotes a date the network can hold.
One reconciled recommendation, ranked, with the trigger, the alternatives considered, the constraint that applied and the expected impact attached — ready to approve, edit or reject. Not three separate alerts from three separate systems.
Distribution deployments start with the decision that carries a number — usually replenishment or order promising — and the first domain is live in 8 to 12 weeks without touching the ERP.
Start with your version of this decision.
Thirty minutes on the decision that costs your operation the most, mapped across the systems you actually run.