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Supply Chains have a lot of grey areas.
When I interact with various supply chain professionals, they tend to define their current issues in black and white... Our demand forecasts are poor, suppliers are inflexible, products should be classified as MTS or MTO, we should segment our portfolio as fast movers and slow movers, etc.
We need to get out of this ‘Binary Bias’. The world of supply chain can’t be defined in black and white, there are many shades of grey as well.
The same product can be MTS for certain channels and MTO for some customers. A product like sunscreen can be a slow mover in certain geographies and winter, but a fast mover in some other geographies during summer. Some suppliers may be flexible in lead time, some others may be flexible on order quantity.
Discussing an issue in black and white terms ends up polarizing it and people harden their stance. Once we acknowledge the grey shades, solution can become much more flexible to accommodate these grey shades.
My suggestion would be to describe the current situation and problem at a more granular level to bring out various shades of grey.