Production delay — the order will not ship in time

This Watch reads the shape of an order in production and asks whether it is still going to make the date you promised. In Settings → Workspace → Watches it sits under Supplier Integration as SI-3.

What it watches for

• An expected ship date that has moved past the date the order has to ship to make in-hands.
• An order past its expected ship date with no shipment recorded.
• A silent stall — no status change at all for several business days on an order that should be moving.
• A status that went backwards, or an order that was canceled.
• A back-order hold placed after the purchase order was accepted.
• A partial, short or split shipment, or a shipment sent to a different address than the purchase order named.
• An order that shipped but whose transit time will not make the in-hands date — with the faster service that would make it.
• An in-hands date that has passed with no delivery confirmation.

Why it matters

A promotional order has one date that matters, and it is usually an event. A delay caught a week out is a conversation about options; a delay caught two days out is a rush charge, an air freight bill, or a customer standing at a trade show with empty tables. This Watch exists to move that discovery as early as it can go, and to say what the delay costs while there is still a choice to make.

It books as Avoided on the Found ledger.

What it needs connected

• One required: a supplier feed or a mailbox. Either can carry the order — the supplier's own status record, or the confirmations and shipping notices in your mail.
• Helpful: a CRM.

A supplier feed makes this Watch much sharper, because it sees a date move the day it moves rather than waiting for somebody to write about it.

What the point looks like

A point is one item Scout raises with the proof behind it. This one arrives in the Inbox as a recommendation:

The Camp Canine bandana order will miss August 10 — Camp Canine · JOB-2214

Alpha Apparel moved the expected ship date from August 5 to August 8. Ground transit to the Camp Canine ship-to takes three business days, which puts delivery on August 13 — three days past in-hands. Two-day service would make it.

Evidence: the supplier's revised ship date with the date it changed · the purchase order's ship-to and in-hands date · transit and business-day math.

Prepared by Scout: a chase to the supplier, an expedite request, and a heads-up to the customer.

The settings that tune it

None. This Watch has no thresholds of its own — it reads dates and compares them, so there is nothing to make it more or less patient. Its settings block reads No adjustable thresholds.

When it arrives

This is one of the launch-wave Watches, and one of the four built on Scout's supplier engine. It is not raising points today — its row in Settings reads Coming soon. You can turn it on now; there is nothing else to configure. We do not publish a date for it.

Good to know

• Scout cannot expedite an order or change a ship method. It writes the chase and the expedite request; you send them.
• Telling the customer is a separate step and a separate Watch — see FO-2, customer hasn't been told, which is what this Watch hands off to.
• Dates in the point come from calendar and business-day arithmetic on real records, never from a guess.
• A supplier lead time that moves while a quote is still unplaced is SI-6, not this Watch. This one is about orders already in production.
• A supplier whose dates keep slipping across many orders shows up as a pattern in PA-2, supplier performance drift.