If a supplier informs you there’s going to be a significant delay in their shipping, how do you deal with it?

There are different ways to deal with lead-time variations or delayed deliveries.  Pre-check questions are :

a)      What is the late delivery date authenticated by the customer?

b)      What is the time optimizing delivery method for this shipment? Example, customer intended to ocean freight the shipment, for expediting delivery, ask the supplier to air transport it and bear the difference between air and ocean transport. Work back from the delivery date and decide what is the suitable mode of transport

c)       Who is the alternative supplier in your approved vendor list? Contact them

d)      Search new suppliers in the market

e)      If the item is standard product, ask the supplier is it available in their any of dealer network inventory?

f)       Substitution with better lead-time. Quality, cost and specification should be identified before approaching the substitute supplier

g)      How you maintain your safety stock? This will help you to pad from stock outs for standard products and minimum configuration changes required items.

h)      Can be re-configured from existing inventory?

i)        MoSCoW prioritization method

j)        Drill down the reason from supplier tiers and identify the cause, assist them with your expertise to expedite the production.

In at most severe scenario, inform all stakeholders, sales, operation, SCM and customer.  A delay from a monopolist is a real-delay but still you have negation tool to expedite the delivery.

Always have a alternate supplier to begin with. Think of a substitute product which can be used for production or if its on the shelf product, try to promote other products (maybe at discounted price). Make use of this opportunity to promote other products. Be sure to be humble about it and apologize for the delay.

Get a concrete answer for the delay and ask for the date when will it be delivered. So you can update your customers and notify them of when the product will be on shelf.