Diagnostic Tool: HFS Supply Chain Rationalization Navigator for Consumer Goods

An executive decision environment for consumer goods supply chain leaders to diagnose complexity, select rationalization levers, sequence changes, and embed governance.

Between 2020 and 2025, consumer goods companies added layers of supply chain infrastructure in response to successive disruptions. Each decision was individually rational. Collectively, they produced architectures that are more expensive, slower to adapt, and harder to govern. We, at HFS, estimate that 12% to 18% of supply chain cost in consumer goods is now structurally hidden, distributed across inflated cost-to-serve on long-tail SKUs, redundant warehousing for promotional inventory, and carrier fragmentation across channels.

The HFS Supply Chain Rationalization Navigator is a four-module decision environment that gives leadership teams a structured path from diagnosis to action.

• Module 1 surfaces where complexity is concentrated across five domains and prioritizes no more than three for intervention.
• Module 2 provides a library of seven rationalization levers, coded by domain, with impact ranges and trade-offs.
• Module 3 compares three scenario archetypes and produces a decision-sequenced roadmap where at every checkpoint, the executive leadership exercises judgment.
• Module 4 establishes the governance that prevents complexity from returning. Organizations that skip governance can experience 60% to 80% of rationalized complexity returning within two years.

The Navigator includes diagnostic question sets for five complexity domains, a lever impact framework, scenario comparison tools, a governance operating model, and an illustrative end-to-end case study showing how a consumer goods company identified $86 million in hidden supply chain cost.

The complete navigator journey is a four-module sequence

Source: HFS Research, 2026

To access the full Navigator, click the download button below.