See every shortage while there is still time to act

What this module does

A long-lead casting nobody ordered is the reason a project ships three weeks late. The purchaser knew the project needed it but the demand was on a planned production order, the stock was zero, the vendor's lead time was 14 weeks, and no list pulled the three facts together until a planner walked the floor in week 11 and asked. With one list that already does the comparison, the casting shows as uncovered the day demand is booked, and the order goes in week one instead of week eleven.

Key pages

Purchase reads production demand from planned, firm-planned, and released orders and compares it against inventory and what is already on order. Items that come up short go on a shortage list; the purchaser picks lines, drops them in a cart, and creates the purchase order with requested and promised dates pre-filled from the component due date minus the vendor's transport time. Items already on open orders sit on a separate list sorted by promised date, with past dates in red and late risks obvious. Long-lead items with no stock, nothing on order, and no demand show as a fourth list, the one a purchaser scans at the start of each week to catch the next casting before week eleven.

Purchasers stop maintaining a shortage spreadsheet by hand. Every line carries the project tag from the order header, so the posted invoice lands in the right project's actuals without a journal correction in finance later. A late vendor surfaces three weeks before the part is needed, not the day the line was supposed to ship, which means the customer hears about a slip before they ask. The Friday afternoon stand-up moves from “which items might we have missed” to “here is what we ordered, here is what is coming in, here is what is at risk.”