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Most supply chain transformations do not fail because of poor algorithms, weak data, or lack of planning sophistication. They fail at the boundaries—specifically, in the handover between one decision layer and the next. One of the most common and damaging boundaries is the handover from Supply Planning to Sequencing.

The Illusion of Control

Supply Planning is designed to answer strategic questions:

• How much should we produce?
• When should we commit volume?
• How do we balance service, inventory, and capacity?

Sequencing is designed to answer operational questions:

• In what order should jobs run?
• How do we minimize changeovers?
• How do we absorb real-world variability?

Problems arise when Supply Planning tries to answer both
When highly granular start dates, fixed sequences, or implied execution instructions are handed downstream, they create the illusion of control—while quietly destroying execution flexibility.

Why Good Solvers Still Deliver Bad Outcomes

In complex manufacturing environments—battery charging , assembly production, injection molding, plastics, chemicals—execution reality is dominated by:

• Changeovers and campaign logic
• Line sensitivity and yield stabilization
• Shared bottlenecks and micro-disruptions

A sequencing engine needs degrees of freedom to solve these problems. When those degrees of freedom are removed at the handover, the downstream system is not failing—it is being structurally constrained.

This is why organizations experience:

• Constant manual overrides
• Erosion of trust in planning outputs
• Endless replanning cycles without real improvement

What a Well-Designed Handover Looks Like

The handover should not transfer control. It should transfer intent.

A robust boundary between Supply Planning and Sequencing passes:

• Volume commitments at a higher time bucket (for example, weekly)
• Explicit priorities and constraints
• Clear guardrails around service, inventory, and capacity

What it deliberately avoids passing:

• Fixed daily or shift-level start times
• Implied execution sequences
• False precision that sequencing cannot realistically honor

This separation allows sequencing to operate autonomously within the plan, not in conflict with it.

What Changes When the Boundary Is Fixed

When the handover is redesigned correctly, the impact is structural rather than incremental:

• Plans stop breaking in execution
• Changeovers reduce without changing total volume
• Manual firefighting declines sharply
• Planners and schedulers stop working against each other

Performance improves not because the solver becomes smarter, but because the system stops self-sabotaging. This boundary-aware orchestration is a core strength of OEM platforms such as Blue Yonder, where planning intent and execution reality remain aligned without collapsing into a single, over-constrained model.

The Core Principle

Value is created inside solvers.
Value is preserved—or destroyed—at handovers.
If OTIF, throughput, or stability is plateauing, resist the instinct to add more detail or tighter constraints.

Instead, ask a harder question:

• What exactly are we handing to the next process?
• Are we enabling optimization—or disabling it?

Fix the boundary, and the system starts working as designed.