The architecture

Intersections

Where decisions meet.

The substrate eliminates the cost of sharing state. It doesn't eliminate the cost of reconciling objectives. Reconciliation happens at intersections — specific points where two planes meet over shared state with competing goals. Every other vendor treats these as integration projects. We treat them as first-class architectural artifacts: named, versioned, testable intersection contracts.

Three shapes

Every real-world cross-plane collaboration has one of three shapes. The shape determines the protocol.

Peer

Mutual convergence

Two planes at similar cadence contest the same state. Neither dominates. Protocol: mutual visibility + an explicit conflict-resolution rule, consensus forecasting, dual-price exchange, or Glenday-sieve reshape.

Hierarchical

Commit with flex

Upstream commits; downstream respects the commitment as constraint or price. Protocol: commitment contract with precedence rules and an explicit slack envelope — plus an escalation path when downstream can't meet upstream.

Hub

Many to one

N planes observe or modify one state object, forecast, inventory, capacity, lifecycle, commitment ledger. Protocol: single source of truth, write-ownership rules, cascading invalidation, subscription fan-out.

Knowing the shape lets us pick the right protocol without reinventing it each time.

Three planes, seven zones

Demand Planning, Supply Chain Planning, and Transportation Management are peer planes — none subsumes another. They share state at three pairwise intersections and one triple intersection. The Venn below is the visual summary; every zone is a contract in the catalogue that follows.

DP only

Forecast generation (P10 / P50 / P90)
Demand sensing & lift attribution
Cannibalization matrices, elasticity surfaces
DemandEnvelope contract — the hand-off downstream

SCP only

SCP

MPS / MRP, supply plan of record
Inventory positioning, safety-stock policies
Supplier allocation, sourcing decisions
Constrained solve (LP / MILP) for committed plan

TMS only

TMS

Load building, carrier procurement
FreightTender waterfall, rate management
Dock scheduling, appointment windows
Real-time visibility (project44) and exception resolution

DP ∩ SCP

DP∩SCP

Forecast envelope hand-off (P10 / P50 / P90 → supply commitment)
Pre-build / pre-position decisions for promo and launch
Demand–supply rebalance during disruption

SCP ∩ TMS

SCP∩TMS

Transfer orders — SCP commits, TMS executes
Lane capacity feasibility feeding back into SCP solver
Transportation plan reconciled against supply plan

DP ∩ TMS

DP∩TMS

Launch-window and promo-window carrier-capacity reservations
Last-mile / parcel demand spikes triggering carrier pre-buy
Regional demand shifts driving outbound carrier-mix changes

DP ∩ SCP ∩ TMS

all

The full demand-to-delivery commitment loop
Promo and launch: DP volume → SCP pre-position → TMS booking
Disruption response cascade across all three planes
The commitment ledger — every promise every plane has made

The triple intersection — the commitment ledger — is what makes the demand-to-delivery loop a coordinated transaction rather than three sequential systems passing files.

The catalogue

Every significant intersection across the six decision planes, with the contract that makes it work. Each is tested in isolation and extended as new planes are added.

Portfolio × Supply Planning

Hierarchical

Shared state: Multi-year capacity plan, strategic sourcing commitments, long-lead component commits, tooling investments.
Decision boundary: Portfolio owns launch calendar and strategic sourcing; Supply Planning owns capacity reservation and feasibility.
Objective tension: Portfolio NPV and strategic fit versus Supply's service–cost–capital frontier.
Collaboration protocol: Portfolio emits launch feasibility constraints and a shadow price on long-lead capacity. Supply returns feasibility feedback upward and holds veto on infeasible launch windows, which Portfolio either accepts or escalates to capex.
AIIO moment: Supply infeasibility implies a launch delay or a capex trigger, a decision no agent should make silently.

Portfolio × Demand Shaping

Peer

Shared state: Launch-window promo eligibility, launch lift curves, cannibalization matrix across NPI and existing portfolio.
Decision boundary: Portfolio owns launch timing and lifecycle stage; Demand Shaping owns promo depth, timing, and trade spend around that stage.
Objective tension: Portfolio wants clean launch runway; Demand Shaping wants to maximize lift around the launch window.
Collaboration protocol: Shared launch calendar. Portfolio emits lifecycle-stage eligibility rules; Demand Shaping proposes promo plans within those rules; cannibalization matrix is jointly owned with change control.
AIIO moment: A proposed promo threatens launch cannibalization, or actuals diverge from the launch prior, surfacing the collision for human judgment.

Portfolio × Warehouse

Hub

Shared state: Active SKU list, velocity profiles, slot allocation, pick-face design.
Decision boundary: Portfolio owns SKU lifecycle events; Warehouse owns slot allocation and re-slot waves.
Objective tension: Portfolio change cadence (launches, EOL, assortment resets) perturbs slot economy; Warehouse wants slot stability for throughput.
Collaboration protocol: Portfolio emits SKU lifecycle events to the shared lifecycle hub; Warehouse consumes and plans re-slot waves on its own cadence. Not real-time coupling, but non-trivial.
AIIO moment: NPI launch velocity mispredicts, degrading slot economy materially, or an EOL stranded inventory is creating slotting drag.

Demand Shaping × Demand Forecast

Peer

Shared state: Lift and cannibalization estimates, promo-attributable demand, baseline vs promo split, elasticity response surfaces.
Decision boundary: Demand Shaping proposes promo depth and uplift claims; Demand forecasting certifies or flags attribution.
Objective tension: Demand Shaping wants high lift claims that justify trade spend; forecasting wants honest, calibrated attribution.
Collaboration protocol: Shared calibration against actuals. Elasticity surfaces are jointly owned, versioned, and auditable.
AIIO moment: Calibrated lift attribution contradicts a submitted promo plan, the agent is flagging that the expected lift will not materialize at this depth.

Demand Shaping × Supply Planning

Hierarchical

Shared state: Committed promo volumes, pre-build plans, pre-positioning deployment, capacity reservations for surges.
Decision boundary: Demand Shaping commits volume with windows; Supply Planning commits pre-build and pre-position with service-risk bands.
Objective tension: Demand Shaping wants retailer availability (service); Supply Planning wants minimum inventory holding cost.
Collaboration protocol: Demand Shaping emits volume commitments; Supply returns pre-build plans with cost / stranded-inventory risk bands. Re-negotiation triggers on material actuals divergence, not at rigid re-plan cadence.
AIIO moment: Pre-build is at risk of stranded inventory (low confidence in lift) or stockout (actuals exceeding plan).

Supply Planning × Production Scheduling

Hierarchical

Shared state: Released work orders, capacity reservations, sequencing hints, component availability, changeover state.
Decision boundary: Supply commits work order quantities and due dates; Production owns sequencing with changeover optimization.
Objective tension: Supply wants adherence to the week's build plan; Production wants intra-day resource efficiency, which prefers different sequencing.
Collaboration protocol: Supply emits WO commitments; Production owns sequencing. Changeover cost is a Lagrangian dual price Production returns upward, influencing the next Supply run's SKU sequencing rather than requiring renegotiation.
AIIO moment: Production will miss the week's plan, the scheduler has tried and the agent knows the gap is real.

Supply Planning × Transport

Hierarchical

Shared state: Deployment plans, lane volumes, dispatch windows, dock appointments, carrier contracts.
Decision boundary: Supply emits deployment requirements; Transport consolidates, schedules, and selects carriers.
Objective tension: Supply wants deployment to hit targets; Transport wants efficient load consolidation and carrier utilization.
Collaboration protocol: Supply passes deployment requirements; Transport returns landed-cost feedback plus capacity warnings. Spot-market usage feeds back as RFP signal to contract planning.
AIIO moment: Carrier capacity forces a service-window risk, a cost/service trade-off that needs explicit acknowledgement.

Production Scheduling × Transport

Peer

Shared state: Inbound material arrival windows, FG ship-by commitments, dock sequencing, line-side readiness.
Decision boundary: Production emits need-by times and ship-by commitments; Transport returns confirmed inbound arrivals and outbound pickup schedules.
Objective tension: Production wants materials on time and trucks exactly when the line finishes; Transport wants efficient inbound routing and carrier turn.
Collaboration protocol: Negotiated appointment windows. Production emits need-by; Transport confirms arrivals within a flex envelope; mutual escalation on miss.
AIIO moment: Inbound delay will cascade into line stoppage, or line over-run will miss the booked outbound truck.

Transport × Warehouse

Peer

Shared state: Dock schedule, staging lane allocations, inbound ASN state, wave release windows.
Decision boundary: Transport owns arrival and departure timing; Warehouse owns dock assignment and wave orchestration.
Objective tension: Transport wants predictable dock turn; Warehouse wants smooth labor flow and even wave pacing.
Collaboration protocol: Dock slot negotiation with lookahead. Inbound ASN drives wave preparation; Warehouse emits dock saturation signals upward when queues form.
AIIO moment: Dock congestion will cascade into overtime labor or missed wave completion.

Production Scheduling × Warehouse

Peer

Shared state: Component staging requirements, finished-goods putaway, kanban state, line-side inventory.
Decision boundary: Production emits pull signals from the line; Warehouse commits staging wave windows.
Objective tension: Production wants materials at the line now; Warehouse wants sequenced, efficient staging waves.
Collaboration protocol: Pull signals from line drive staging waves; Warehouse acknowledges and commits a wave window. Shared kanban state closes the loop.
AIIO moment: Staging misses threaten line continuity, or line over-pulls threaten wave pacing for other lines.

Why AIIO lives most consequentially here

Most within-plane Informs are about one agent's model uncertainty. Intersection Informs are about objective tension, and that's where human judgment most clearly pays for itself.

Composite Informs

Each plane alone may not trip its Inform threshold, the intersection does. A Demand Shaping agent confident in lift, and a Supply agent confident in pre-build, can still have a combined outcome no human should let stand silently. The coordination fabric detects the tension and synthesizes a composite Inform.

Overrides cascade upward

An override at the intersection is often evidence of miscalibration upstream. If a scheduler overrides a production sequencing decision because of a capacity reality the supply plan didn't see, that's training signal routed back into Supply Planning, not just captured locally.

Conservative thresholds

Because the cost of a missed intersection is paid by two planes, not one, intersection Inform thresholds are set more conservatively than within-plane thresholds. More Informs here, where the stakes compound.

"Overrides at intersections reveal the organization's actual trade-off preferences. Capture them once, the agents improve forever."

What an intersection contract specifies

Every intersection contract in the catalogue is specified along the same seven axes. This is what makes adding a new plane a well-defined engineering task instead of an integration project.

1 · Shared state

The state object(s) both planes touch, and which plane owns writes.

2 · Decision boundary

Which decision variables belong to which plane, and where the seam lies.

3 · Collaboration shape

Peer, hierarchical, or hub, determines which coordination mechanic governs.

4 · Commitment protocol

What level of promise transfers, with what flex envelope and re-negotiation triggers.

5 · Conflict resolution

Precedence rules, dual-price exchange, or human escalation, defined per intersection.

6 · Composite Inform rule

When does cross-plane objective tension trigger a Decision Stream surface?

7 · Override routing

Which plane's policy receives the training signal when the human overrides at this intersection, the plane that was actually wrong, not just the plane that acted.

With this catalogue in place, adding a new plane becomes: identify its intersections, write the contracts, implement against the substrate. No surprise couplings. No integration tax. That's why the world model and AIIO aren't just concepts — they're operating disciplines the whole platform enforces.

See the intersections in motion

Watch composite Informs surface in the Decision Stream when two planes disagree, and see how overrides reshape the agents upstream of the conflict.

See the Decision Stream Read about the world model