The Law of Sequencing Coupling: The First Principles and Physical Turn of Supply Chain Management——On the Genesis Mechanism and Orthogonal Governance of "Mathematically Feasible, Yet Physically Inexecutable"
For three decades, global manufacturing has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in supply chain digitalization, yet remains trapped in high inventory, late deliveries, and cross-functional KPI frictions. Traditional management science blames organizational misalignment, but this paper, derived from first principles of physics, delivers a counter-intuitive verdict: It is not KPI Conflict, it is KPI Coupling. Conflicts can be coordinated, but coupling cannot be decoupled; it can only be orthogonalized. 【Core Discovery & Academic Significance】This paper formally establishes Meng's Law of Sequencing Coupling.It reveals the axiomatic failure of traditional Operations Research reductionism (IID assumptions, additive scalar objectives, decomposable constraints). By constructing a minimal deterministic spatiotemporal model under "Four Sterile Baseline Hypotheses", the paper proves that even with 100% forecast accuracy, 100% clean data, and 100% constraint mapping, as long as planning requires sequencing, shared resources will inevitably undergo rigid topological coupling. This generates a Spatiotemporal Phase Cross-Mismatch, projecting onto the organizational boundary as Vector Cancellation, making a schedule mathematically feasible but physically inexecutable (Systemic Sudden Death). This means: any attempt to bypass this Law through algorithm optimization, S&OP alignment meetings, or brute-force AI scheduling models is essentially accelerating internal entropy generation and self-destruction. 【Solution & Industrial Validation】The only path to resolution is "coupling cannot be decoupled, it can only be orthogonally lifted." This paper establishes a Dual-Stage Orthogonal Governance Architecture: Extensive Material Stream Temporal Pull [O(N)] + Discrete Capacity Local Residual Permutation.This architecture has been validated in Lenovo Global Supply Chain, a mega-scale industrial complex with millions of discrete orders and hundreds of thousands of BOM levels. It has operated continuously and stably for 18 years, elevating the delivery commitment response rate to over 98%. 【Copyright & Patent Boundary】The theoretical framework is open-sourced globally under CC BY 4.0. However, engineering implementations—including the Living State Model, dual-helix orthogonal operators, and the IPC Engine—are strictly protected by multiple invention patents. Any commercial implementation requires formal written authorization from the patent holder. Keywords: Value Chain Physics; Meng's Law of Sequencing Coupling; Vector Cancellation; Four Sterile Hypotheses; Spatiotemporal Phase Cross-Mismatch; Orthogonal Governance; Computational Irreducibility; ROIC.
Authors
- Grit Meng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8603-119X)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Published
- 2026-10-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23319071
- Primary Topic
- Management and Optimization Techniques
- Type
- preprint