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Company policies often come in the way of faster response.
Supply chain professionals often experience a sudden surge in demand for a particular product. If the inventory buffers in their replenishment supply chain are sized properly, they would possibly have stocks to service the demand immediately. Do they end up servicing it?
My experience suggests that it doesn’t happen in many cases due to certain restrictive policies imposed by companies. A company I was consulting with had a policy that any demand exceeding 110% of the monthly forecast had to be pre-approved by the ASM. The approval often took a couple of days, resulting in a loss in OTIF. Empowering the front-line customer service team led to a sharp increase in fill rates and OTIF.
If we want to make the supply chain more responsive, we must question the utility of such policies and remove them.