Order's Journey: Opened, Started, Lost
This is how an order’s story unfolds.
07:30 AM. Monday morning. Kerem, the new manager in operations, opens his email. By 7:30, 12 messages are waiting. Three from customers, nine from support teams.
Serap, an engineer at Merkezi Elektrik (Central Electrical), has an update to the technical specifications she mentioned yesterday. Because the project timeline compressed, a special test needs to run from the start of production.
“Please add this to the work order,” she writes.
Kerem files the email. He says he’ll call the production planner later. He doesn’t do it yet.
08:15 AM. Çetin, the production planner, picks up the work order he prepared last night from the printer. Five pages: BOM, routing, machines, timeline. He shares it in the system. Production is green-lit.
08:45 AM. Yusuf, the manufacturing manager, finds Çetin: “New quality procedure. Serap sent a change. Checkpoints are different now.”
Çetin: “I didn’t know. Is there an email?”
Yusuf relays what Serap told him by phone. Çetin: “Okay, I’ll update the routing file.”
But which routing file? There is the one in the system, the paper copy in the work order, an Excel tab on Çetin’s laptop, another Excel file with Yusuf.
Which one gets updated?
Details scatter
09:30 AM. Serdar, the lead machinist on Line 2, reads the work order and starts production on the lathe.
10:00 AM. Gözde, the quality technician, sees a new WhatsApp message: “From Serap: the test procedure will be…” Gözde reads the new instruction. But the paper work order does not show the new procedure. The work order still has the old one.
Gözde calls Yusuf to ask what to do.
10:30 AM. Murat, the storekeeper, looks at the materials list on the work order to prepare raw materials. One version says 50 kg of Material A. But on Çetin’s Excel file, it says 55 kg. Murat does not know which to trust. He calls Yusuf. Yusuf says over the phone: “Make it 55.”
Murat prepares 55 kg. No system records this decision.
11:00 AM. Serdar’s machine starts making an odd noise. It needs service. The backup machine is busy elsewhere. Serdar calls his manager.
“It’ll be fixed in half an hour,” Yusuf promises. But the work order does not show downtime. The system is still calculating normal production time.
12:30 PM. The machining is done. Quality control begins. But Gözde’s head is on the new procedure; the paper work order shows the old one. Which procedure should she follow?
She calls Yusuf. Yusuf says, “Use the new one.”
The quality report records: “Standard procedure applied.”
No. The new procedure was applied. But the system does not record this change.
The time sheet
Planned time on the work order: 8 hours.
What actually took time:
- Machining: 3 hours
- Machine breakdown, waiting, transferring to backup: 1 hour 15 minutes
- Material prep (Murat’s question and the decision): 30 minutes
- Quality control with new procedure (deviation from standard): 2 hours
- Waiting for the paper work order to be synced and information to align: 45 minutes
Total: 7.5 hours.
What does the system report? “Planned 8 hours, actual 8 hours.”
The manager sees that number. Why it completed early, why the cost changed, how to optimize—none of this is visible.
Production continues
By Friday, Yusuf, reviewing the report from the previous week, felt something off in this order’s outcome. He could not say what went wrong.
Serap sent requests. Çetin has routing files. Murat has an Excel sheet. Gözde knows the new procedure. Yusuf has phone notes.
The information exists, scattered.
It is not recorded in one place.
Does a similar order come in next week? The learning from this order is gone. Çetin will say, “Working with Serap means special production care.” But why? What was learned? The system does not know.
Why this state?
In made-to-order production, every order is unique. Every change comes quickly, and most arrive by word of mouth.
The system does not capture changes in real time.
Paper, Excel, WhatsApp, phone call—each is a fragment of the truth. But the system stays blind.
The result:
- No one fully knows the cost.
- What happened this order is forgotten for the next similar one.
- Customer satisfaction problems and complaints go unexplained.
- Rework and wasted effort are not recorded.
If every change from Serap, every machine breakdown, every material update, every quality procedure change flowed into the system as it happened, the work order would become a living document. The manager would know exactly what is unfolding.
In made-to-order manufacturing, system support is essential for management and learning.
This series examines, through concrete shop-floor scenarios, why made-to-order manufacturers need better systems to capture and coordinate production information.