In today’s fast-moving supply chain landscape, traditional KPIs like throughput and OTIF tell only part of the story — what happened, not how quickly you acted when it mattered.
A recent Supply Chain Brain article, highlights decision velocity as a new KPI that measures the time it takes to detect a disruption, decide on the right response, and execute that action. It’s a powerful way to evaluate responsiveness and agility, not just outputs.
At South Atlantic, ProStar and Versatile, we live this every day in co-packing, whether it’s responding to last-minute packaging changes, optimizing labor on the line, or adjusting to demand spikes. The ability to sense change, act with clarity, and execute fast isn’t just operationally valuable — it directly impacts customer satisfaction and competitive advantage.
Here’s how we’re thinking about applying decision velocity in our operations:
- We have five stand-alone flagship locations and seven operations embedded at customers’ sites. Our teams operate as a part of a holistic enterprise, linked by state-of-the-art Nulogy software, common culture and collaborative mindset
- Our teams – line leaders/quality chiefs wear color-coded vests so information from the floor to the right decision-makers happens in real time.
- In addition to Nulogy, we use a proprietary software, called WHATTA, which allows us to see production status, trends and opportunities, giving us an added edge on where to focus.
- Getting the right results in minutes, not hours, is built into how we get our customers’ business done.
Measuring responsiveness — not just output — is critical in a volatile market. As the article says: the difference between good and great isn’t who moves product faster — it’s who decides faster. How is your organization measuring agility and responsiveness? Let’s start a conversation!