  Stratifying commercial product portfolios into multiple classes of decreasing
priority, ABCD analysis, is a common supply chain tool. Key planning parameters
that drive strategic and execution priorities are tied to the resulting
segmentation. These priorities in turn drive supply chain performance. For
large product assortments, manual segmentation is infeasible so an automated
algorithm is needed. We therefore advocate that careful attention be paid to
the design of such an ABCD algorithm and present three key features that can be
incorporated into such a calculation to improve its quality and commercial
utility.
