Inventory and Planning

We Expedite Something Every Day

Expediting moves one job ahead by pushing others back. When it happens every day, the hot list becomes the real schedule and lead time grows for everything else. The fix is upstream: what gets released, when, and against what capacity.

What Is Usually Going On

  • More work is released than the constraint can finish, so queues are long and only hot jobs move.
  • Planned lead times are shorter than actual, so orders are late before they start.
  • Shortages from suppliers or upstream areas stop jobs partway.
  • Priorities change faster than the floor can finish anything.
  • Nobody counts the hours spent expediting, so it passes for normal work.

How to Fix It

  1. Log every expediteFor two weeks, log each one: item, reason, and hours spent chasing it. Group by reason.
  2. Size the hoursTotal the expediting hours per week and show them as FTE. That is time planners and leads are not spending on the plan.
  3. Release to capacityRelease work only as fast as the constraint can finish it. Shorter queues mean fewer jobs fall late.
  4. Fix planned lead timesSet planned lead time from actual queue and run time (Little's Law), not from the old system value.
  5. Work the top shortageTake the top reason from the log, often one supplier or one part family, and fix it at the source.
  6. Use one priority ruleSequence by due date at the constraint. A hot job must displace a named job, decided by one person.

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Production Scheduling for Manufacturing
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Little's Law: The Most Important Formula in Production Management
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When It Moves to the Floor

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Common Questions

Is expediting ever the right call?

For a true one-off, yes. If the same items or suppliers are on the hot list every week, it is a planning problem.

Why does expediting make lead times longer?

Each hot job jumps the queue, so the jobs behind it wait longer, fall late, and become next week's hot jobs.

Who should own priorities?

One person per area or constraint, working from one list. When several people set priority, the loudest request wins.