Factori/Insights

Insights

Notes from the operations floor.

Short, specific pieces on the problems we get asked about most. No trend pieces, no vendor comparisons. What works, with numbers.

Demand forecasting · 6 min readHow to measure forecast accuracy when demand is intermittentMAPE breaks on items that sell zero most weeks. Here is what to use instead, and why the choice changes what your planners do.Read →Inventory & replenishment · 7 min readSafety stock: the textbook formula against optimizationThe z-score formula is fine when demand is normal and lead times are fixed. Neither is true in most warehouses. Here is where it goes wrong and what replaces it.Read →Warehouse management · 6 min readWhy every new vendor takes three weeks to onboard, and how agents cut it to daysFor 3PLs, integration is the bottleneck on growth. The fix is not another connector. It is changing who reads the spec.Read →Method · 5 min readWhat a two-week AI diagnostic actually coversMost AI engagements start with a pilot and end with a slide deck. A diagnostic is the opposite: short, fixed-price, and it ends with a ranked list you can act on without us.Read →