Hi all, I have been thinking a lot about Desire Paths during the very long and snowy winter up here in Boston. Desire Paths are the illicit trails that run through snow drifts and across grass lawns that are formed when pedestrians abandon the paved or plowed sidewalks for a more direct route. They represent a rebellion of utility against design - and they show up anywhere humans and computers interact! Desire Paths are especially present in supply chain and procurement software systems - and they should not be ignored! They are the hacks and workarounds that users employ to get the system to do what they need. Users are signaling that the system’s design doesn’t align with the realities of their environment. To build truly resilient supply chains, we must stop building fences to enforce compliance with rigid processes and start analyzing the “why” behind deviations. I discussed the concept of Desire Paths in my FreightWaves conversation #179 last week with Jason Traff, co-founder of Shipwell, and wrote an article on it for the latest edition of ISM (Institute for Supply Management). Links to both of these are in the first comment. Do you have any examples of Desire Paths that you have seen in your systems? Or Desire Paths that you have created yourself? Let me know.
Dr Chris Caplice recently. I’ve been coming back to the idea of just good enough. I think it aligns with your idea of desire paths. I wholeheartedly agree that it’s the naturally settling state of the supply chain. We need these connections and interactions to be just good enough. Anything more and it rattles margin and investment, anything less and it impacts satisfaction and deteriorates the relationship. Well done and I’ll continue to follow your work on this.
Chris Caplice - The idea of treating workarounds as signals rather than failures is interesting. Once you understand the "why" behind the deviation, the harder question is which ones to build into the system and how far they should be taken. Some are clear signals of design gaps. Other might solve a short-term issue but introduce risk or cost in less obvious ways. For example, a planner bypassing lowest-cost carrier logic to protect service on a volatile lane maybe solving a problem. But turning that into standard practice can shift the cost-service balance more than intended. Curious how you've see teams approach that in practice.
Hi Chris. Very interesting topic. It reminds me of a short story we read for my high-school Marathi course (year 9 or so), called "paulvata" = paths that people take across a farm or a rural landscape. One of the lessons from it was that those shortcuts are incredibly stubborn. You cannot eliminate them. Like whack-a-mole, fencing one off will create another one. It's human desire to find shortcuts, and a lesson we had discussed was to accept the paths and find their utility. Your analogy between such desire paths in snow-covered Boston or a tropical farms and supply chain systems is very interesting. I am curious to see where this discussion leads and what suggestions your readers offer.
Interesting term I learnt today, Chris - Desire Paths. Reminds me of ant colony optimization, just instead of pheromones, its human instinct to find the shortest path. I led an interesting project during my supply chain operator days called Factory Direct. We took our top 5 customers (>50% of revenue share) and eliminated DCs and even cross-docking, and sent product directly from factory with firm forecasts & fixed production schedule. Not only did we avoid double-touching at DCs and TL costs, we cut about 40% off of cycle times and our customers were happy with the costs and SLAs.
Desire paths = the unofficial “this is how work actually gets done” layer every system pretends doesn’t exist.
Desire Paths in supply chain are also early warning signals. When planners bypass your forecasting tool to run their own Excel models, they're telling you the system's confidence intervals don't match real demand variability. The workaround is the data point. The best teams I've seen treat these deviations as inputs for system redesign, not compliance failures to be coached out.
Chris , a very insightful analogy —the idea of “desire paths” perfectly reflects what happens in real supply chains. In procurement, these workarounds are usually not about breaking rules, but about getting things done when systems don’t match ground realities. Instead of treating them as violations, organizations should see them as useful feedback on what’s not working. By understanding the “why” behind these actions, companies can improve processes and make systems more practical. Ignoring them only creates rigid systems that look good on paper but struggle in real operations.
In the age of AI and vibe coding desire paths are becoming full blown apps
Chris always has a way of dropping a concept you can’t stop thinking about. Worth adding though. The systems creating these Desire Paths were shaped by the same forces. Path of least resistance and incentives don’t just drive user behavior. They drive how systems get built in the first place. The workaround and the design flaw are two sides of the same coin.
Here is the link to the Freightwave episode with Jason Traff. https://www.dat.com/podcast/freightvine and here is the link to the ISM Article - https://www.ismworld.org/supply-management-news-and-reports/news-publications/inside-supply-management-magazine/blog/2026/2026-03/dont-ignore-the-desire-paths/