Fill rate
Percentage of demand served from available inventory. It measures whether you had the product when the customer asked, without considering punctuality.
Fill rate is the percentage of demand you managed to serve from available inventory.
Unlike OTIF, it does not consider punctuality: it answers one question, did you have the product when it was requested?
The three measurement bases
It can be calculated on different bases, and choosing the wrong one is the most common source of pointless arguments:
| Base | What it measures | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| By line | % of order lines filled complete | Most used; good balance |
| By unit | % of pieces shipped over pieces ordered | When volume per line varies widely |
| By order | % of orders filled 100% | The strictest; close to OTIF |
The same month can show 97% by unit and 88% by order. Neither is lying: they measure different things.
What a low fill rate reveals
Rarely a purchasing problem. The usual causes, in order of frequency:
- Inventory inaccuracy — the system said there was stock and there was not
- Forecast misaligned with real demand
- Concentration in a few SKUs that run out and drag the average down
The first is the most common and the cheapest to fix: it does not require more inventory, it requires knowing where the inventory you already have actually is.
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