The information tax: why manufacturing orders go late

Summary. Late orders usually start as an email that nobody acts on. Operations teams lose about 6 hours per person per week finding out where orders stand. That time can be measured, priced and recovered without new headcount or a new ERP.

How an order goes late

1. Day 1. A supplier emails your buyer: the castings will slip 10 days.
2. Days 2 to 20. The email sits under 200 others.
3. Day 21. Your largest customer calls your manager. You hear about it second.
4. Day 22. You spend $14,000 on expedited freight to save the order.

The supply problem was known on day 1. The visibility problem cost the other 21 days.

One question, six answers

Every Monday someone asks: will the order ship Friday? The answer is spread across six places:

• The buyer's inbox says the castings arrive Wednesday.
• The scheduler's spreadsheet says Thursday.
• A Teams chat asks whether anyone called the supplier.
• The customer wrote about it in a thread nobody can find.
• The last quote on the shared drive is from 2021.
• The senior buyer knows this supplier always slips in Q4.

So someone makes three phone calls to get an answer they still do not fully trust. Across a team, that is about 6 hours per person per week. We call it the information tax. None of that time makes a part.

Why it is getting worse

Most operations leaders have the same mandate: ship more, hire no one and raise EBITDA. Without new people or new machines, the only capacity left is the time the team already spends, and much of it goes to looking for answers.

There is a second cost. A senior buyer with 26 years of supplier history knows which supplier slips before the holidays, who to call to rush an order and what a customer paid in 2021. None of it is written down. When that person retires, it leaves with them, and buyers of the business look for exactly that key-person risk in diligence.

How to get the hours back

1. Measure the tax. Ask the team how many places they check to find where one order stands, and how many hours a week they spend chasing status. That is the baseline.
2. Start with one question. "Which open POs are at risk this month?" touches purchasing, planning and customer service, and the cost of a miss is easy to price.
3. Compare the plan with what suppliers said. Late orders hide in the gap between the date in the ERP and the date in the supplier's latest email. Catch that gap the day the email arrives.
4. Require a source for every answer. If a tool says a PO is late, you should reach the exact email in one click.
5. Price it in dollars. Ten people saving 6 hours a week at $45 an hour is about $140,000 a year. Avoiding eight expedites at $14,000 adds $112,000. Both go straight to EBITDA.

The goal is not more software. It is acting on the day 1 email on day 1. Indax reads supplier email and ERP data together and flags the gap as soon as it appears.