Continuous improvement is valuable, and most supply chain teams do it well — tightening a process, adjusting a parameter, removing a step. But sometimes results plateau no matter how much the process is refined. When that happens, the constraint is usually not the process. It is the operating model around it.
Here are five signs that the issue is structural, not procedural.
1. The same service issues keep coming back
A stockout is fixed, the cause is addressed, and three months later the same category is short again. Recurring problems that survive their own fixes point to a structural gap — an ownership vacuum, a planning process that cannot see far enough ahead, or incentives that pull in different directions.
2. Every plan needs a hero to execute
If hitting the numbers depends on a few experienced people working around the system — manual spreadsheets, informal calls, personal relationships — the operation is not really running on its process. It is running on those individuals, and it is one resignation away from a problem.
3. Roles and decision rights are blurred
Ask who owns product availability. If the answer involves three departments and a caveat, that is the finding. When accountability is shared it is effectively held by no one, and decisions either stall or get made three times.
4. The numbers do not agree
Sales, operations and finance each bring their own version of service level, forecast accuracy or inventory. Time goes into reconciling figures rather than acting on them. Without a shared version of the truth, every meeting restarts the same debate.
5. Improvements do not outlast the person who made them
A project delivers a real gain, the lead moves on, and within a year performance has drifted back. If improvements are not held by a role, a routine and a metric, they are borrowed, not banked.
What "more than process" means
The operating model is the structure around the work: how teams are organised, who decides what, how planning runs end to end, which KPIs matter, what the systems support, and how performance is governed. Fixing it means redesigning some of those elements together — not tuning any one of them in isolation.
How to tell the difference
A quick test: if you described the problem to an experienced planner and their honest answer was "we know how to fix that, we are just not set up to", the work is structural. That is the point at which a transformation — rather than another improvement cycle — pays off.
May Advisory helps organisations see which of the two they are facing, and design an operating model that makes good performance the default rather than an achievement.