Selecting the right path: a framework for lead-time reduction in consumer goods supply chains

Purpose Consumer goods firms often face severe shortages caused by forecast inaccuracy, where a few variants become unexpected bestsellers and trigger costly stockouts. This article positions the choice of lead-time reduction initiatives as a crucial decision for enhancing responsiveness and mitigating shortages and frames this decision as a performance-management prioritization problem under uncertainty. Design/methodology/approach This work developed a pragmatic direction-selection framework grounded in a design science approach and applied in a case to guide managers in evaluating and prioritizing lead-time reduction initiatives. The framework integrates insights from the literature with feasibility-oriented evaluation criteria, applying the principles of multi-criteria decision analysis to assess initiatives in terms of expected return on investment (impact relative to effort) and implementation horizon. Findings The study offers a theory-based, empirically validated framework for identifying and planning lead time reduction initiatives in a context of hard-to-predict demand, making explicit a performance-management logic for prioritizing responsiveness initiatives. The case shows that initiatives with attractive expected impact–effort profiles are not necessarily robust priorities once implementation risk and sensitivity to assumptions are considered. Research limitations/implications The study advances performance-management research by reframing lead-time reduction as a decision problem under uncertainty and extending the focus from performance evaluation to intervention selection, translating dispersed responsiveness insights into a replicable prioritization logic, validated in a real case and supported by sensitivity checks. Practical implications The study provides a stepwise decision-support tool that helps cross-functional teams prioritize feasible lead-time reduction initiatives and translate them into an implementation plan, with risk and sensitivity checks to avoid assumption-driven choices. Originality/value The paper offers a validated innovative decision-support framework that operationalizes lead-time reduction as a performance-management choice under demand uncertainty, using an explicit prioritization logic to select responsiveness initiatives end-to-end.