This page is for a buyer or sourcing agent who already scores a supplier's performance season by season but has never checked whether that supplier's own trend, across several seasons, is actually improving, holding steady, or getting worse. At work, a scorecard that reports only last season's figure can call a supplier "acceptable" for years in a row while its own real trend quietly worsens underneath that single acceptable score. This lesson mainly teaches the decision flow: it shows how to build a scorecard that predicts a supplier's own rising risk from its trend, not just from its latest snapshot.
Meridian Sourcing tracks Delta Garments' performance on behalf of Northline Apparel across four consecutive seasons of Order A's own repeat placements. Each season's own score, taken alone, has looked "acceptable." Nobody at Meridian Sourcing has yet lined up all four seasons side by side to check whether "acceptable" is actually masking a supplier sliding toward genuine risk.
You need: no previous lesson from this track, though the approval matrix from lesson T27-C04-L01 and the OTIF rate from lesson T27-C04-L02 are exactly the two figures this lesson's scorecard tracks across seasons.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: tracking every approval an order needs, covered in lesson T27-C04-L01, and calculating a single season's own OTIF rate from shipment records, covered in lesson T27-C04-L02.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Performance record | The factory's own history of on-time delivery, fault rate, and responsiveness on a given account, used as evidence in a growth proposal. |
| Trend direction | Whether a supplier's own tracked figure, such as its OTIF rate, is rising, holding steady, or falling across several consecutive seasons. |
| Single-season score | A supplier's own performance figure for one specific season only, read without comparison to any earlier or later season. |
| Risk prediction | A judgment about a supplier's own likely future performance, built from its trend across several seasons rather than from its most recent score alone. |
| Masked risk | A worsening trend that stays hidden because each individual season's own score still falls inside an "acceptable" range on its own. |
| Trend scorecard | A single record placing a supplier's own figures for several consecutive seasons side by side, so a trend, not just a snapshot, becomes visible. |
The general rule is that a supplier scorecard predicts risk only when it compares a supplier's own figures across several consecutive seasons, not when it reports one season's score in isolation. A figure that falls inside an "acceptable" range every single season can still be falling steadily from one season to the next, and a scorecard that never lines up those seasons side by side has no way to show that decline before it crosses into a genuinely poor range.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Export supplier on a fixed repeat order | Delta Garments' own OTIF rate on Order A's own repeat placements can be tracked season by season with a consistent quantity and timeline each time, making the trend comparison direct. | A repeat order with the same quantity and timeline each season removes order-size differences as an explanation for a changing figure. |
| Domestic supplier on Make to Stock reorders of varying size | Cedar & Co.'s own reorders from Delta Garments vary in size season to season, so its own OTIF trend should be read alongside reorder size, not assumed to mean the same thing at every size. | A changing reorder size can itself explain part of a changing OTIF rate, so a trend read without that context can mislead. |
| Hybrid supplier splitting capacity across export and domestic lines | Delta Garments running both Order A's export line and Cedar & Co.'s domestic reorders on shared capacity may show one market's own trend worsening exactly as the other market's own orders grow, revealing a capacity trade-off. | A hybrid supplier's trend on one market can be a direct consequence of a decision favouring the other market, not a general decline. |
| Supplier tracked through an agent across multiple buyers | Meridian Sourcing, tracking Delta Garments for more than one European buyer, can compare a trend that is specific to Order A's own placements against a trend for a different buyer's orders on the same factory. | A trend visible on one buyer's own orders but not another's points to an order-specific cause, not a factory-wide decline. |
Each of Delta Garments' last four seasons on Order A has scored "acceptable" on its own. Meridian Sourcing lines the four seasons up side by side for both OTIF rate and average approvals turnaround time.
Delta Garments' own OTIF rate is falling at an average of about 4 percentage points per season. Projected forward one more season at the same rate, the next season's own OTIF rate would fall to roughly 76%, a figure that would likely cross out of an "acceptable" range even though the current season's own 80% score still sits inside it.
A common mistake is a buyer or agent checking a supplier's score against a single acceptable threshold every season and stopping there, never placing the current season's figure next to the two or three before it. The mistake persists because each season, taken alone, genuinely does clear the threshold, so there is no single moment that feels like a decision point, right up until a season finally falls below it. What this costs is real: if Meridian Sourcing keeps clearing Delta Garments season after season on its still-acceptable 80% OTIF rate, without noting the 12-point four-season decline behind it, Northline Apparel enters a season where the actual rate has likely fallen below acceptable with no warning, because every prior scorecard reported the season in isolation.
A supplier's score for one season can look perfectly fine on its own while the same supplier is actually sliding, season after season, toward real trouble, and the only way to see that slide is to place several seasons side by side rather than judging each one alone. Calculating the average change per season and projecting it one season forward turns a vague sense that "things seem to be getting a little worse" into a specific number a buyer can act on before the decline crosses into a genuinely poor range. A scorecard that only reports the latest season is not predicting anything; it is simply describing the past.
Northline Apparel's sourcing review is due this week. Delta Garments' current season OTIF rate on Order A is 80%, still inside Meridian Sourcing's own "acceptable" 75% threshold. Delta Garments' representative has asked for automatic renewal on the strength of that current, passing score.
Should Meridian Sourcing recommend renewal on the same terms, based on the current season's own passing score alone? Decide before opening the answer.
No, not on the current score alone. An 80% score that clears a 75% threshold this season says nothing about where that score is heading.
First, Delta Garments' own OTIF rate has fallen from 92% to 80% across the last four seasons, a 12-point decline averaging about 4 points per season, even though every one of those four scores individually cleared the acceptable threshold.
Second, projecting the same 4-point-per-season decline forward one more season puts the next season's own OTIF rate at about 76%, uncomfortably close to the 75% threshold itself, and a single further point of decline would put it below.
Meridian Sourcing should recommend renewal only with a stated condition: Delta Garments must show its OTIF rate stabilizing or improving within the first half of next season, reviewed against the trend, not a fresh single-season snapshot judged against the threshold alone.
At a projected 76% OTIF rate next season, roughly 3,600 of Order A's own 15,000 pieces would arrive either late, short, or both, against a threshold of 75% that the projection barely clears at all. Renewing on the current season's still-acceptable score, without addressing the trend behind it, leaves Northline Apparel one more season of decline away from a supplier that genuinely fails its own agreed terms.
Open the course workbook's "Trend scorecard" sheet. Enter each season's own OTIF rate and average approvals turnaround time for at least three consecutive seasons; the sheet lines the seasons up side by side, calculates the change from season to season, the average change per season, and a one-season-forward projection with a live formula, so a still-acceptable current score never hides a genuinely worsening trend underneath it.
[Download the Approvals and OTIF scorecard worksheet](../../templates/T27-C04-approvals-and-otif-scorecard-worksheet.xlsx)
1. A supplier's OTIF rate over three seasons is 90%, 86%, 82%. What is the average change per season, and what does a one-season-forward projection suggest?
2. A supplier scores 'acceptable' every season for four seasons in a row, against a fixed threshold. What is the most likely risk of reporting only each season's pass or fail result?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Performance record | سجل الأداء | Historique de performance | Performans kaydı | The factory's own history of on-time delivery, fault rate, and responsiveness on a given account, used as evidence in a growth proposal. |
| Trend direction | اتجاه المؤشر | Direction de la tendance | Trend yönü | Whether a supplier's own tracked figure, such as its OTIF rate, is rising, holding steady, or falling across several consecutive seasons. |
| Single-season score | نتيجة موسم واحد | Score d'une seule saison | Tek sezon puanı | A supplier's own performance figure for one specific season only, read without comparison to any earlier or later season. |
| Risk prediction | توقّع المخاطر | Prédiction du risque | Risk tahmini | A judgment about a supplier's own likely future performance, built from its trend across several seasons rather than from its most recent score alone. |
| Masked risk | خطر مقنَّع | Risque masqué | Gizlenmiş risk | A worsening trend that stays hidden because each individual season's own score still falls inside an "acceptable" range on its own. |
| Trend scorecard | بطاقة تقييم الاتجاه | Fiche d'évaluation de tendance | Trend puan kartı | A single record placing a supplier's own figures for several consecutive seasons side by side, so a trend, not just a snapshot, becomes visible. |
You now know how to read a supplier's own trend across seasons to predict risk. The final lesson of this course brings the approval matrix, the OTIF rate, and the trend scorecard together into one working worksheet. Back to the course map