The SCOR DS reference.

Connects strategy to the operating processes — the coordination layer over Plan, Order, Source, Transform, Fulfill, and Return.

Orchestrate

SCOR DS's Level-0 process: the activities that connect the supply chain externally to suppliers and customers and internally to its stakeholders — strategy, business rules, network design, data and analytics, risk, ESG, and performance management. The layer where the other six processes are integrated and enabled. glossary →

Balancing demand and supply to meet sourcing, production, and delivery requirements.

Demand planning

The process of estimating future demand and maintaining that estimate as evidence arrives. Its quality is measured less by any single forecast than by how quickly persistent error is noticed and re-planned. glossary →

Forecast bias

The tendency of forecast error to lean in one direction — consistently over or under. Bias is more dangerous than error: random misses wash out, but persistent under-forecasting quietly consumes buffers until something breaks. glossary →

MAPE

Mean absolute percentage error — a standard measure of forecast accuracy: the average size of forecast misses relative to actuals. Useful with two cautions: it says nothing about direction (see forecast bias) and behaves badly near zero-demand items. glossary →

Plan

One of SCOR DS's six Level-1 processes: developing the road maps to operate the supply chain — determining requirements, assessing resources, balancing the two, and identifying actions to close gaps. Plans are made for each of the other execution processes and reconciled with one another. glossary →

S&OP

Sales and operations planning — the recurring management cadence, typically monthly, that reconciles demand, supply, and financial plans into one agreed operating plan. Its cycle time is a structural limit: deviations that emerge mid-cycle wait for the next meeting unless a faster monitoring loop covers the gap. glossary →

Safety stock

Inventory held deliberately against uncertainty in demand or supply. Correctly sized, it converts variance into a calculable carrying cost; incorrectly sized, it is either an outage waiting to happen or working capital parked without a purpose. Service targets move; buffers should be re-decided when they do. glossary →

Taking, promising, and managing customer orders.

Allocation

The decision of which orders receive available supply when commitments exceed it. Allocation strategies (protect contracts, pro-rata, first-in-first-out, protect margin) ship the same units with very different penalty and relationship outcomes. glossary →

Available-to-Promise (ATP)

What you can still promise: the supply left over once existing commitments are subtracted from inventory and scheduled receipts. When committed demand exceeds ATP, the question is no longer how much ships — it is who ships and who waits. glossary →

Backorder

An order (or order line) accepted but not yet fulfillable from current supply, carried forward with a new promise date. A disciplined backorder is promised against confirmed inbound recovery, not against hope. glossary →

Order

One of SCOR DS's six Level-1 processes, new in the Digital Standard: the activities associated with the customer purchase of products and services — quoting, capture, promising, allocation, and order management. Split out of classic SCOR's Deliver. glossary →

Promise date

The date committed to a customer for delivery. A defensible promise is derived from where supply actually lands — confirmed receipts, vessel ETAs, production completion — so it is a commitment the network can keep rather than a habit the order desk repeats. glossary →

Re-promise

A revised delivery commitment issued when the original promise can no longer be met. Done well it is proactive — set against confirmed recovery supply, before the customer discovers the miss. A disciplined re-promise costs relationship capital once; a silent miss costs it with interest. glossary →

Procuring goods and services to meet planned or actual demand.

Corrective action request (CAR)

A formal request that a supplier investigate a performance failure, identify the root cause, and document the fix, with evidence. Distinct from commercial remedies such as penalties or award shifts: a CAR addresses the underlying problem rather than repricing its consequences. glossary →

Lead-time variance

The spread of actual lead times around their average. Buffers are sized against variance, not means — a supplier whose lead time is long but stable is easier to plan around than one who is fast on average and unpredictable. glossary →

Source

One of SCOR DS's six Level-1 processes: procuring, ordering, scheduling the delivery, receipt, and transfer of products and services — the inbound side of the chain, from supplier agreement to paid receipt. glossary →

Supplier scorecard

A standing record of a supplier's measured performance — reliability, responsiveness, quality, cost — against agreed floors. A scorecard earns its keep when it is connected to thresholds that trigger decisions; a grade nobody acts on is a report, whatever it is called. glossary →

Converting materials or inputs into finished products or services.

Demonstrated capacity

What a resource has actually produced under real conditions, as opposed to nameplate capacity — what it could theoretically produce. Schedules built on nameplate numbers fail predictably; demonstrated capacity is the honest planning basis. glossary →

Schedule adherence

The share of the released production schedule executed as released. Persistent gaps mean the schedule is not executable as built — common causes include nameplate-based capacity assumptions, material shortages, and unplanned downtime — and every promise planned against that schedule inherits the gap. glossary →

Transform

One of SCOR DS's six Level-1 processes: the scheduling and creation of products. Classic SCOR called it Make; the rename widens the scope beyond manufacturing to any transformation of inputs into offers, including kitting, assembly, and refurbishment. glossary →

Work in process (WIP)

Inventory that has left raw material but not yet become finished goods — value parked mid-transformation. WIP days of supply measure how long that value sits; growing WIP with flat output is a flow problem announcing itself. glossary →

Delivering and installing the order — the promise kept.

Fulfill

One of SCOR DS's six Level-1 processes: executing customer orders and services — scheduling delivery, picking, packing, shipping, installation and commissioning, and invoicing. Together with Order it replaces classic SCOR's Deliver. glossary →

LTL / FTL

Less-than-truckload and full-truckload freight. Consolidating several LTL departures into one FTL trades some schedule flexibility for meaningfully lower cost per unit — a standing lever when transportation markets tighten. glossary →

Spot market (freight)

Transportation capacity bought transactionally at current market rates rather than under contract. The safety valve when contracted carriers decline tenders — and the expensive way to hide a structural capacity problem if used as a default. glossary →

Tender (freight)

The offer of a specific load to a carrier under contracted terms. The tender acceptance rate — the share of offers carriers take — is a leading indicator of transportation trouble: it falls weeks before service does. glossary →

Moving product back, and the reverse and circular flows around it.

Circular supply chain

A supply chain designed so products, components, and materials re-enter productive use — through repair, refurbishment, remanufacture, or recycling — instead of exiting as waste. SCOR DS connects the Return process explicitly to circular activities. glossary →

Disposition

The decision of what happens to a returned or nonconforming unit: restock, repair, refurbish, harvest for parts, or scrap. Dispositioning per unit — by condition, entitlement, and economics — is the difference between a returns cost center and a recovery operation. glossary →

Return

One of SCOR DS's six Level-1 processes: the reverse flow of goods and services from the customer back through the network — receiving, diagnosing condition, evaluating entitlement, and dispositioning into Transform or other circular activities. glossary →

Reverse logistics

The physical movement half of the Return process: transporting, receiving, and staging goods flowing against the forward direction of the chain. Reverse flows have forward economics — lanes, consolidation, and cycle times all still count. glossary →

RMA

Return merchandise authorization — the controlled intake of a return: who may send what back, under which entitlement, to which location. The RMA record is where return-reason data is born, which makes its quality a quality-signal issue, not a paperwork issue. glossary →

Every SCOR metric rolls up to one of eight performance attributes — the dimensions a supply chain is judged on. The codes below are the SCOR DS attribute prefixes.

• RL Reliability
• RS Responsiveness
• AG Agility
• CO Cost
• PR Profit
• AM Asset Management
• EV Environmental
• SC Social

Fill rate

The share of demand served from available supply in a period, measured in units, order lines, or complete orders — the basis must be stated for the number to be comparable. During a shortfall, allocation determines how misses are distributed across customers more than it moves the aggregate rate. glossary →

On-time-in-full (OTIF)

A delivery-reliability measure: the share of orders delivered complete and by the committed date. Frequently contractual — Tier-1 customer agreements attach penalty clauses to OTIF floors, which is why allocation decisions must read the customer master, not just the order book. glossary →

Perfect order fulfillment

The strictest reliability metric: an order counts only if delivered in full, on time to commitment, with accurate documentation, in perfect condition — every component must pass. In SCOR DS it is a Level-1 reliability metric (Perfect Customer Order Fulfillment, RL.1.1) whose components serve as its diagnostics. glossary →