Worked example · Supplier delivery exceptions
A pilot, week by week.
Six weeks at a sample manufacturer with four buyers and a planner: the baseline, the setup, what the team worked live, and the readout that decided whether to go ahead.
A composite, illustrative scenario. These are not LevelOneAI customer results.
Before day one
The baseline
Taken from the last quarter and signed with the success criteria: catch supplier changes earlier, and cut expedites and late customer shipments caused by suppliers.
- Open POs
- 142
- Supplier changes a week
- About 25
- Expedites last quarter
- 9, about $61,000 in premium freight
- Line stops waiting on parts
- 2, 14 hours
- Customer shipments late because of suppliers
- 6
- Warning before the need date
- About 1 day
Weeks 1–2
Setup, from the pilot kit
During setup, the team established its operational data sources, exception criteria, ownership rules and approval requirements. The workflow was tested against representative scenarios on the plant's own data before going live.
See the pilot kitWeeks 3–6
The team works real exceptions
Week 3
PO 4512 caught on the day it moved
Ridgeway moved the date from Oct 12 to Oct 26. Operations Resolution connected it to run A-88 on Oct 20 and two customer orders worth $214K, and opened an item for the buyer the same morning.
Week 3
A split shipment instead of an expedite
The buyer asked for 60 housings by Oct 19. The planner approved it, and the item stayed open until the parts were received.
Week 4
A vague reply didn't close the item
"Working on recovery, will confirm Monday" isn't a date, so the item stayed open and the fallback went for approval six days before the need date.
End of week 6
The readout
Problems prevented come first, and they're reported separately from how the work changed. A result only counts where the Operations Resolution flagged the problem first.
Business outcomes
- Problems flagged before anyone acted
- 11
- Resolved before the need date
- 9 of 11
- Expedites in the 4 live weeks
- 1, against a baseline pace of 3
- Customer shipments late because of suppliers
- 1, against a baseline pace of 2
How the work changed
- Exceptions with the impact assembled automatically
- 87%
- Time from a supplier change to a decision
- 3.1 days → 0.6 days
Decision: go
The success criteria were met, so the pilot became phase 1 of Operations Resolution. What the team confirmed during the pilot carried straight over, and the pilot fee was credited to setup.
Illustrative composite scenario · sample company and figures
Run this on your own supplier delays.
$5,000 for 6 weeks, credited in full to setup.