Supply Chain KPIs with Dr. Jeff Hutchinson & Tim Tsouchlos

What should middle-market executives actually be measuring in their supply chain?

For many companies, the problem isn’t simply a lack of data. It’s knowing which metrics matter, understanding how they affect one another, and creating a consistent view of performance across the organization.

In this episode of Middle Market Smart, CXO Partners Operating Partners Tim Tsouchlos and Dr. Jeff Hutchinson join Bill Getch to introduce an executive framework built around 20 supply chain KPIs across four critical categories: service, cost, cash and capital, and velocity.

Each category contains five specific KPIs designed to help leadership teams understand a different part of supply chain performance.

But the real value comes from looking at them together.

Improving service may require more inventory or faster shipping, increasing cost and tying up cash. Focusing too aggressively on cost can hurt service and customer relationships. Reducing inventory can free up capital while creating new risks elsewhere in the business.

Tim and Jeff explain why leaders need to understand these tradeoffs instead of optimizing individual metrics in isolation.

They also explore why many middle-market companies struggle to measure supply chain performance in the first place. Data may be fragmented across functions and systems, visibility can be incomplete, and putting KPIs in place creates a level of accountability that organizations are not always prepared to act on.

Jeff shares a real-world example of a company that dramatically increased inventory ahead of a critical selling season but failed to measure the broader impact across its supply chain. Despite having more than enough product, distribution and visibility problems prevented it from reaching customers when it mattered.

For CEOs, CFOs, COOs, supply chain leaders, and private equity teams, this episode provides a starting point for building a more complete picture of supply chain performance and identifying where to focus next.

And the 20 KPIs are only the beginning.

Upcoming episodes of Middle Market Smart will drill deeper into each of the four KPI categories, bringing in additional executive perspectives, practical examples, and use cases to show how these measurements can be applied.