In an MHE project, the problem is rarely that nobody knows what matters. The problem is that Finance, Operations, Engineering, QHSE and Sustainability each mean something different by it, and only find out once the quotes are already in. The Octagon makes that difference visible before it costs money.
Choose which roles sit at your table. Each profile starts on what we usually see that role weigh in practice. Is someone missing? Then add an own role. Adjust the profiles to your situation: each role divides 40 points across eight dimensions, so more weight on one automatically means less on another. Exactly as in real life.
Per dimension we look at the gap between the highest and the lowest participant. The average of those eight gaps is set against the largest gap possible. No black box, just spread. Note: a high score is not automatically good. Sometimes it means one voice dominates, or that a role is not at the table yet.
Not every difference is a problem. But a large difference that has never been voiced almost always resurfaces while the quotes are being assessed. These are the points that sit furthest apart in your profile.
The Octagon does not tell you which forklift to buy or which supplier is best. It cannot, and that is exactly the point. What it does do is make visible which choices your organisation has not yet made together.
Anyone who starts by requesting three quotes goes to market too early. By that point the assessment criteria are already fixed, usually implicitly, and usually set by whoever spoke loudest at the table.
Price and lead time are the two dimensions that always get discussed. The other six usually determine whether you are still happy with it five years from now.
Not just the purchase, but maintenance, energy, batteries, residual value and contract costs across the whole term.
What does this choice really cost, and over how many years?
Production time, stock, implementation and the interim solutions needed until everything runs.
When does this genuinely have to be operational?
Response time, parts, breakdown handling, reachability and how much of that is contractually fixed.
What does an hour of downtime actually cost us?
Capacity, running hours, aisle widths, working environment, ergonomics and whether the equipment can genuinely handle the job.
Which tasks must this genuinely handle?
Running hours, downtime, breakdowns, energy, damage, and whether you can actually steer on that later.
Which decision do we want to be able to make with this?
The transition itself: training, acceptance, charging infrastructure, fallback scenario and dependency on a single party.
What happens if the transition does not go smoothly?
Buying, renting, leasing or VaaS. Being able to add units in peaks and scale down when volume drops.
How certain is our volume three years from now?
Emissions, battery technology, charging infrastructure, service life and the targets you are held to.
How heavily should sustainability weigh in this decision?
The Octagon is the first step of the approach we use in a tender process. The aim is not to get everyone to agree, which rarely works and is not necessary either. The aim is that the trade-off is made deliberately instead of by accident.
Every role fills it in separately, without conferring. That is deliberate: as soon as people fill it in together, a compromise forms before the difference has been visible.
The spread is the agenda. Not to determine who is right, but to surface the assumptions nobody had voiced.
What counts how heavily in the assessment, and why? This is the document that later keeps the award from becoming a gut-feel debate.
"Good service" is not a requirement. A response time, an availability percentage and a consequence for missing them are. Only then can you compare suppliers fairly.
With a tender suppliers can answer comparably, and an assessment framework already agreed within the organisation.
Every role involved divides the same 40 points across eight dimensions of an MHE decision: price and TCO, lead time, service quality, fit for the task, insight and data, operational risk, flexibility and sustainability. Because the budget is fixed, the allocation forces a choice. The profiles are then laid over each other in one figure, showing per topic how far the participants are apart.
Filling it in together produces a compromise before the difference has ever been visible, and that difference is exactly the information you are looking for. So the answers from colleagues stay hidden until you have filled in your own.
Five per session at most. That limit is deliberate: more profiles in one figure becomes unreadable. In practice five roles cover the parties that sit at the table for an MHE decision.
A PDF report with the combined figure, each profile drawn separately, the degree of internal alignment and the three topics where you are furthest apart, each with the question better answered up front than afterwards.
No, and that is the point. It says nothing about machines or suppliers. It makes visible which choices the organisation has not yet made together. That is where a sound tender process begins.
Fill in your own profile above and save it. You get a link straight away to invite your colleagues, and a PDF with the comparison as soon as more profiles come in.
We email you a personal report with the octagon, the alignment and the main tension points. Your profile becomes visible to everyone who joins through the same link afterwards.
Your PDF has been sent. Forward the link below to invite your colleagues; their profile is then added straight away.