When supplier promises diverge from warehouse receipts

Promised dates on purchase orders are intentions. Goods receipt stamps are what the warehouse experienced. When those two diverge, production plans and safety stock debates become emotional instead of factual.

Match each closed PO line to its first receipt date for a fixed supplier list. Ignore partial theories until the first receipt; early partials can be handled in a second pass. Plot the lag in calendar days and mark holidays that affected either the supplier or your dock.

We often find that a supplier’s average looks acceptable while a thin long tail of late lines drives most of the production interrupts. The briefing should show both the middle and the tail, with line counts attached.

Warehouse visits help when timestamps are missing. Ask how dock staff record late trucks: handwritten logs, security gate times, or end-of-day batch entries. That context keeps you from treating a batch-scan artifact as a supplier failure.

Close the study with buffer and escalation suggestions that both buying and operations can live with. Dual-sourcing notes belong only where the tail is chronic and material-critical.