Product Complexity Model

Left to right is the life of a product: order, receive, store, make, package, inspect, store, pick, pack, ship.

Every thin line is one item. Blue lines are things being made and shipped. Amber lines are packaging. Grey lines on the left are things being bought. A triangle is one item sitting in stock.

Drag the slider to grow the operation from Day one through Early and Mature to Sprawling. Nothing about the process changes. Only the number of items does.

Tick Rework and scrap to see what complexity costs in things done twice or thrown away. Red curls with broad arrows are items that went round a step again. Scrap runs along one red line to the dumpsters at the bottom right, one dumpster for every 8 scrapped items. At Receiving the arrows are returns to source: goods sent back toward the vendor after a wrong item, a wrong count or a purchase order mismatch, and the scrap is goods rejected or damaged on arrival. The red count in each step is the full number. The share lost at each stage compounds as that stage gets more complex, and it feeds the people estimate, the cost index and OTIF. Set the rates under Rework and scrap rates.

Use the minus and plus buttons to add or take away one offering, size, package type or channel. The chart and the numbers under it show what came with it.

Animate flow and dashes crawl along every line in the direction product moves, and round the red loops. It stops for anyone whose computer asks for reduced motion.

OTIF is the share of orders that go out on time and complete. It falls as complexity compounds, and falls further when Rework and scrap is ticked.

The numbers under the chart count what the picture shows. Select any number for what it means.

What it leaves out: volume. It counts how many different things there are, not how much of each. The cost index is relative, not dollars. The people figure is an estimate.

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