How a Pull-Based Operating Model Frees Working Capital, Improves Service Levels and Retires the Firefight​

Date d'enregistrement: September 2, 2026
Durée: 32 mins
Invités: Erik Bush and Wally Leasure

Aperçu

Every supply chain leader has lived the same week: a demand forecast revised for the third or fourth time, a planner expediting an order that was fine last Tuesday, a warehouse simultaneously out of the item customers want and overstocked on the item they don’t.

That isn’t a planning failure, it’s the predictable result of building an operating model on three assumptions that no longer hold: that demand is knowable, that lead times are fixed, and that more forecasting accuracy is the fix.

In this session, Erik Bush, EVP, Internal Operations at Algo, lays out the design of the alternative: a pull-based operating model that paces replenishment to actual consumption, uses material, time, and capacity buffers to absorb the variation forecasting can’t eliminate, and repositions the forecast as a stress test rather than a director of orders.

À qui s'adresse-t-il

  • CFOs and finance leaders accountable for working capital
  • COOs and VP/Director-level leaders in Supply Chain, Operations, and Planning
  • S&OP and demand planning leaders
  • Board members with oversight of inventory and working capital performance

Ce que vous apprendrez

  • Why MRP’s three foundational assumptions break down. Demand is not knowable at the SKU level, lead times are not deterministic, and three decades of investment in forecast accuracy haven’t moved the inventory-to-sales needle.
  • The three counter-principles of a pull-based operating model: pacing replenishment to actual consumption, using material, time, and capacity buffers to absorb variation, and repositioning the forecast as a stress test for the model rather than a director of orders.
  • A dimension-by-dimension comparison of MRP-led planning versus a pull-based operating model, demand signal, replenishment trigger, variation handling, planner role, and more.
  • Why this is a design exercise, not a software rollout and the questions senior leadership teams need to answer before any system gets touched.
  • The three outcomes to expect: working capital freed (typically a 25–35% inventory reduction), service levels improved, and a planning team freed from the firefight to focus on model configuration and tuning.

Rencontrez les intervenants

Erik Bush

EVP, Internal Operations, Algo

Wally Leasure

Vice President Business Development, Americas

Regardez le webinaire

Discover why standard MRP assumptions fall short, how signal fluctuation propagates through supply chains, and why transitioning to a Demand-Driven Operating Model can reduce working capital while improving fill rates.