The problem: nobody reports a delay
When a job runs late in a machine shop, usually nobody says so. The delay surfaces because somebody asks — and that is often during the shipping week. In the days in between, why it slipped, when it will finish and who promised what is written down nowhere.
The classic answer is the production manager going through a list every morning or messaging a chat group. Neither leaves a record: the promise given today is in nobody's mind tomorrow.
What the assistant does
- It notices. It works out by itself which work order is how many days late.
- It asks. In the shop chat it tags the person responsible: "Work order IE-2026-00007 is two days past its date. What is the reason and when will it finish?"
- It records. The answer is not free text: a reason is picked from a list, a short note is written and a new date is given. The answer is written onto that work order.
- It follows up. On the promised date the system checks whether the job actually finished, and flags the promise that was not kept.
Answered from the floor, on a phone
The supervisor does not have to sit at a computer. The question arrives on his phone; he picks a reason, adds a note and sets a new date. The record reaches the work order, the dashboard and the reports at the same moment.
Against notification fatigue
Systems that produce constant alerts get switched off. Notifications are therefore collected in one list and can be muted: the warning for a machine awaiting repair is silenced with one click until it returns.
