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Work

Supply Chain Exception Escalator

An agent that catches short shipments, silent vendors, and buried backorder notices, checks approved alternates, and puts a ranked shortlist in front of a buyer.

Client
Mid-size manufacturer
Industry
Manufacturing
Results

Results

  • < 15 minFrom exception detection to buyer notification, down from hours.
  • ~8 hrsStaff time recovered weekly as manual research fell from 10+ hours to under 2.
  • ~70%Delayed-shipment exceptions corrected before customer impact, up from roughly 30%.
  • ~60%Estimated drop in incidents needing unplanned customer escalation.

As measured during the implementation.

Agent profile

Agent profile

Watches for
  • PO quantity variance beyond the item or vendor tolerance
  • No shipment confirmation within 24 hours of the expected ship date
  • A backorder notice in vendor email
Runs
Continuously
Connects to
  • ERP purchasing and sourcing data
  • Approved supplier lists
  • Substitution rules
  • Vendor email
Hands off to a person
It never places an order or contacts a vendor on its own. Buyers get a ranked shortlist of approved alternates and keep sourcing authority.
System

One of 3 agents in the same system

Work moves through them in order, and each agent hands the next one cleaner data.

  1. Step 1Unstructured Vendor Data NormalizerAn intake agent that reads invoices, packing slips, and shipping notices from a shared inbox, matches them to open POs, and stages clean records for the ERP’s bulk import.
  2. Step 2Vendor Performance Drift DetectorA weekly agent that reconciles promised ship dates against actual receipts for every active vendor, scores the trend, and alerts procurement before drift becomes a stockout.
  3. Step 3Supply Chain Exception EscalatorAn agent that catches short shipments, silent vendors, and buried backorder notices, checks approved alternates, and puts a ranked shortlist in front of a buyer.
Product
Supply Chain Exception Escalator: exception queue, PO details, and ranked alternate suppliers
The challenge

Vendor documents were already normalizing cleanly and supplier trends surfaced weekly, but there was still no systematic way to respond when an exception hit: a short shipment, a vendor gone quiet, a backorder notice buried in email.

A procurement team member spent more than 10 hours a week parsing vendor email, cross-referencing open POs, and researching alternate suppliers by hand. By the time an alternate order went out, the window to protect the customer had often closed. Silent vendors did the most damage: no bounce, no reply, just a ship date passing until someone checked.

What we built

What we built

How the system works, step by step.

  1. Detect

    Three triggers: PO quantity variance beyond tolerance, no shipment confirmation within 24 hours of the expected ship date, and backorder signals read from vendor email.

  2. Consolidate

    Related signals roll up at the PO-line level, so one problem raises one alert.

  3. Evaluate alternates

    Checks approved alternate suppliers and pre-qualified substitute SKUs against ERP sourcing data, substitution rules, purchase history, and lead-time signals. Substitutes come only from approved options, never from category similarity.

  4. Rank

    Orders viable options by availability confidence, lead time, cost delta, and sourcing priority.

  5. Hand to a buyer

    The buyer gets a short, defensible list of alternatives instead of repeating the research.

Next
Unstructured Vendor Data NormalizerAn intake agent that reads invoices, packing slips, and shipping notices from a shared inbox, matches them to open POs, and stages clean records for the ERP’s bulk import.
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