Expediting has always been part of manufacturing. Orders slip, suppliers run into problems and production schedules change, so there will always be times when someone needs to pick up the phone or send an email to find out what is happening with a delivery. For many supply chain teams, that kind of chasing has become a fairly normal part of keeping production moving.

The difficulty is when it becomes the way supplier performance is managed day to day. If people are spending a significant part of their working week checking delivery dates, following up on commitments, updating spreadsheets, escalating issues and trying to recover orders that are already late, it is worth looking at what is driving that level of activity.

There is a difference between dealing with the occasional supplier issue and having a process that relies on people constantly chasing information. If the same suppliers are being followed up repeatedly, delivery dates regularly change and problems only become visible when an order is already under pressure, the underlying issue may be bigger than any one late delivery.

The wider manufacturing environment provides some context for this. UK manufacturing remained in expansion in August, with a PMI of 51.7 marking the tenth consecutive month above 50, although the pace of growth eased slightly. Supplier delivery times also remained under pressure, adding to the uncertainty manufacturers are already having to manage around production and customer demand.

As businesses grow and supply chains become more complex, it is understandable that teams respond by putting more time and attention into individual suppliers and orders. More follow-ups, more calls and more escalation can help in the short term, particularly when something needs to be recovered quickly, but there is a limit to how much resilience a business can create by simply becoming better at chasing.

If expediting has become a regular part of keeping the operation on track, perhaps the more useful question is not how to get better at it, but why so much of it is needed in the first place.

The hidden workload behind a late order

A change in supplier capacity or material availability can quickly affect planning, production, inventory, freight and customer commitments, with different teams needing to react as the situation develops.

When this happens across hundreds or thousands of orders, procurement can end up spending a significant amount of time maintaining visibility rather than using it to improve supplier performance. Some expediting will always be necessary, but when a business has built a significant amount of its day-to-day operation around reacting to late information, the cost starts to extend well beyond the individual orders. 

If keeping production on track depends on people constantly following up, escalating and reconciling changing information, how much of that effort is actually adding value?

The important moment is often before the delay

One of the more useful measures of supplier visibility is knowing how early a potential problem becomes visible. If a supplier flags an issue on the day a delivery is due, there may be very little the business can do beyond reacting to it, but if that same risk is understood ten days earlier, there are options. That is the real value of visibility: the earlier the business can understand what is changing around an order, the more opportunity it has to act before expediting becomes the only option.

This also changes the nature of the supplier relationship. Suppliers rarely benefit from being chased repeatedly for updates, and neither side gains much from a cycle of emails asking whether a date can still be met. Better collaboration is about making meaningful changes visible early enough for both sides to respond, whether that is a capacity constraint, a revised delivery commitment, a quantity change or a quality issue. 

Perhaps we have normalised too much chasing

 A buyer who manages to recover a late delivery, protect a production schedule or get a critical part into the factory at the last minute is often rightly seen as having done a good job. However, when the same people are having to do this week after week, it is worth looking beyond the individual effort and asking why so much recovery work is needed in the first place.

If the same suppliers repeatedly miss their commitments, if delivery dates regularly move, or if buyers are spending significant amounts of time chasing information, there should be an opportunity to identify the pattern rather than simply manage the next occurrence. That shifts the conversation from how quickly the team can recover a late order to whether the organisation is creating the visibility and accountability needed to prevent the same issues from becoming routine. For decision-makers, that is a much more valuable measure of supply chain performance than the number of problems successfully chased down.

What good supplier management looks like

Manufacturing will always involve uncertainty, supplier constraints and the occasional delivery that does not go to plan. The difference is in how early the business sees those issues, how clearly it understands the potential impact and how much time it has to respond. This requires reliable information around supplier commitments, changes and performance, with the right people able to see what has changed and act on it without creating another chain of emails.

Your ERP can record what has been ordered, what has been received and what is due, but it does not necessarily capture the changing commitments, conversations, issues and actions that sit around those transactions. When that information is fragmented across inboxes, spreadsheets and individual conversations, it becomes much harder to see where risk is building.

Valuechain is designed to bring that supplier activity into one connected workflow alongside the ERP, giving procurement and supply chain teams a clearer view of commitments, changes and supplier performance as they happen. The aim is not to eliminate expediting, but to give teams better information earlier so that fewer issues reach the point where chasing becomes the only option.

For manufacturers dealing with continued pressure on capacity, supply and customer expectations, that shift can make a meaningful difference. The goal is to spend less time recovering information and more time using it to manage supplier performance, make better decisions and act while there are still choices available.

Expediting will always have a place in manufacturing, but if it has become one of the main ways your supply chain stays on track, it may be time to look at what is driving the need for it.

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