Say a supplier has missed several deliveries and your team is spending more time chasing stock. You’re considering holding more inventory to protect the business, even though you’ve been trying to reduce it.
I’d start by talking to the supplier about what has changed. Is there a backlog affecting a particular product? Have they lost production capacity? Are the goods ready but transport is letting them down? I want to understand where the delay starts and which orders it affects.
Then I’d ask how long they expect the problem to last, and what that expectation is based on. A backlog with a credible plan to clear it gives you something to work with. If the answer is that they don’t know when things will improve, that uncertainty has to be part of your planning. You can’t keep treating every missed delivery as a one-off.
I’d also go back through the delivery history. Has the supplier’s performance actually deteriorated, or have we only recently started noticing it? Perhaps the stock we’ve been carrying has been absorbing the delays. Look at when deliveries were originally promised, when they arrived and whether the quantities were complete. A series of revised delivery dates can make the latest promise look more reassuring than the overall performance warrants.
The consequences matter too. Which products are affected? How quickly will we run short? What happens in the stores if the next delivery doesn’t arrive? Empty shelves create problems for customers and put more strain on the team trying to recover the situation. I’d want to know where that pressure is greatest before making a broad inventory decision.
Then I’d ask whether we can get the product somewhere else. A higher purchase price is worth examining alongside what unreliable supply is costing us. If another supplier can deliver dependably, could we carry less stock or avoid some of the emergency work? We need to establish that reliability and compare the full trade-off. The higher price alone doesn’t tell us whether it’s a worse option.
I don’t need to answer all these questions myself. I want the people managing the supplier relationship and the people receiving the goods to help establish what’s happening. They may each have part of the explanation, and bringing those pieces together can change the decision.
Before revising the stock plan, I’d want a clear account of the cause, the products at risk, the evidence for recovery and the alternatives available. Then we can decide what protection we need while the problem is being resolved—and whether this supplier still fits the way we want to operate.
