Plan: the road maps the supply chain runs on

Plan is where requirements meet resources — and where the gaps between them get found early or discovered late. What the process covers, the metrics that matter, and where the recurring decisions live.

What it is. Everything a supply chain executes, it first plans — and SCOR DS treats that planning as a process in its own right. Plan describes the activities that develop the road maps to operate the chain: determining requirements, gathering what is known about available resources, balancing the two, and identifying the actions that close the gaps between them. Planning is a family rather than a single activity — plans are developed for Order, Source, Transform, Fulfill, and Return individually, then reconciled with one another so the road maps agree. That reconciliation is the point: a sourcing plan that never meets the fulfillment plan is two documents, not a plan.

The questions it answers. How much demand are we actually carrying, and how confident are we in it? What supply — on hand, committed, in motion — stands against that demand? Where do requirements and resources diverge, and how early can we see the divergence forming? What is the cheapest reliable correction: buy more, make more, move inventory, or reshape demand? And when a correction is needed, does it wait for the planning calendar or move now?

The metrics that matter.

Measure	SCOR DS	What it tells you
Forecast accuracy (MAPE)	practice measure	How far actuals run from plan, family by family
Forecast bias	practice measure	Whether the misses lean one direction — the silent killer
Re-plan cycle time	practice measure	How long a known deviation waits for a corrected plan
Inventory Days of Supply	AM.2.2	How much buffer the plan is actually spending — rising days with flat service means the plan is buying insurance it may not need
Supply Chain Agility	AG.1.1	How fast the chain can absorb a sustained change in demand or supply

Where the decisions live. Plan’s recurring decisions are triggers. When has forecast error left its control band and made re-planning cheaper than waiting? When does a demand signal justify changing supplier requirements mid-cycle? Both questions have priceable answers: the cost of acting early is a planner-day and some supplier churn; the cost of waiting is measured in expedites and stockouts. A worked example — four weeks of MAPE creep, priced against riding the monthly cadence to its next meeting — is in the forecast-deviation caselet. What ADIP changes is cadence: the balancing act SCOR describes runs continuously against last night’s transactions, with a write-back into the planning system when the trigger fires.

SCOR is ASCM’s framework; coded metrics reference the SCOR DS quick reference. Uncoded measures are common practice measures, not ASCM catalog entries.