A purchase order two days late can stop a whole line waiting for material. Shortages are costly, but oddly, most are not genuinely unbuyable — they are spotted too late. By the time the floor shouts for material, you check and find a key part’s PO was long delayed; now the rush order and air freight have already cost you money and lead time. Delivery management is about turning “found too late” into “warned early.”
The first key: digitize supplier lead times. In many plants, delivery information still lives in the buyer’s head and inbox — which supplier often runs late, how many days a part normally takes, all from experience. Only by recording each part’s and each supplier’s actual lead time as data in the system can you see risk early, rather than relying every time on the buyer’s memory.
The second key: tie lead times, safety stock and the production plan together. When the system knows how much material your upcoming schedule needs, how much is on hand and in transit, and how many days the supplier takes, comparing the three lets it flag “this part will run short if not ordered now” while there is still time. That is the heart of shortage alerting: not reacting after a shortage, but surfacing risk before it becomes a problem. The third key: put purchasing, production and stock on one shared dataset. Three departments each on their own Excel is a breeding ground for information gaps; one live dataset is what lets everyone speak the same language.
With these three in place, shortages go from unavoidable accidents to risks you can mostly handle in advance. You will not never run short, but you will know before it happens rather than when the line stops — and that gap is usually delivery time and cost. Want to turn your existing lead-time information into a system that warns you? Book a consultation.