Before making adjustments, ensure that your inventory planning strategy aligns with your primary business goal:

Higher Fill Rates: Prioritize maintaining healthy inventory levels to meet customer demand. This may require increasing inventory on hand.
Higher Inventory Turns: Prioritize moving inventory faster with smaller, more frequent orders to minimize excess stock.
Minimizing Inventory Costs: Optimize min/max values, order cycles, and cost parameters (holding and replenishment costs) to reduce excess inventory.

Given the delicate balance between these goals, it’s key to choose one hero metric that aligns with your business priorities. Adjusting your strategy for that metric may come at the expense of others. The following guidelines provide data-driven recommendations to help you adjust inventory while keeping these trade-offs in mind.

Note: Before you make any chances, consult with your dedicated Customer Success Manager.

Potential Hero Metrics

This section will guide you through understanding potential inventory issues and how they relate to your chosen priority, with actionable recommendations tailored to help you balance those trade-offs effectively.

Priority	Potential Issue	What It Means	Recommendations
Higher Inventory Turns	Inventory turns are decreasing.	Inventory is moving more slowly, potentially indicating overstocking.	If your company prioritizes higher turns over fill rate, focus on leaner inventory strategies while ensuring key items remain in stock.
Higher Fill Rates	The fill rate is decreasing or not improving.	Inventory may be too lean, leading to frequent stockouts	Increase inventory on hand, especially for high-demand items. Review and adjust safety stock levels to account for variability in demand and supplier lead times.
Minimizing Inventory Costs	Overstock is increasing for stockable inventory.	Inventory levels are too high, leading to increased holding costs.	Consider Business Context: Some overstock may be acceptable due to bulk purchasing or supply constraints. Review Hero Metric: Is your priority trending in the right direction? For example, overstock may be acceptable if fill rates are met. Watch for Trade-Offs: High inventory with a low fill rate signals a potential need for optimization — but higher inventory with strong fill rates may be fine. Review Min/Max Recommendations: If you're using Recurrency min/max, overstock should align with your targets. Overstock is relative to your min/max values.

Planning Guidelines

When optimizing inventory, the goal is to balance supply, cost, and demand in a way that supports business growth. Rather than blanket recommendations, it's important to define rules tailored to specific inventory types and their performance metrics.

For example, if a B Class item has a low fill rate, it might require a different inventory strategy than a sparse item with great fill rates but poor turns (which is expected given the nature of sparse items). Recognize the trade-offs—adjusting inventory levels can improve one metric, but may impact another (e.g., increasing safety stock to improve fill rate may drive up costs). A thoughtful, customized approach will help you manage inventory more strategically and sustainably.

Issue	Why It Matters	Recommendations
I am experiencing stockouts.	Your inventory may be running too lean. There may be an increased risk of stockouts, or you might be placing orders too frequently. For example, Mins may be too low, not leaving enough time to restock before the next potential sale.	Review your min/max settings: Review your Order Cycle. Is it correctly set up? If it is set up, are you creating a long enough time between orders to build up purchase requirements? If you want your inventory to not drop too much, consider increasing your Order Cycle. This will increase your Min recommendations without impacting your Max.
My POs are larger than expected.	Large or infrequent orders may lead to higher holding costs.	Review your min/max settings: Review your Order Cycle: are your order cycles too long or the delta between Min/Max too wide? This may be leading to ordering too much at once. Consider decreasing Order cycle
Mins and Maxes are too high, either for specific items or in general.	May be leading to excess inventory.	Review Lead Times and ensure they look accurate. Decrease Safety Stock either individually or in bulk to impact both Mins and Maxes.
Mins and Maxes are low high, either for specific items or in general.	May be leading to excessively lean inventory.	Review Lead Times and ensure they look accurate. Increase Safety Stock either individually or in bulk to impact both Mins and Maxes.

Onboarding Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Inventory Mission Control Overview

Cheat Sheet to Recommendation Inputs

Understanding when Min equals Max & How to Adjust It

Suggested Demand Planning Workflows

If-Then Guidelines

Potential Hero Metrics

Planning Guidelines