Waiting
Asking For What You Will Need Next
Most of what gets waited for was available long before it was requested, and the delay comes from asking at the moment of need rather than of knowing.
Who is working when, for the people on this page
Us, Hamburg, sending the chases
Chases get written on our Monday and our Friday
The supplier receiving them, Taipei
Our Friday afternoon is their Saturday, which is a working day
two parties · five days of the seven are working days for all of them · Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
The two days on which chases are habitually written here are the two worst days to send them to either of the counterparties in these notes.
Where an agreed deadline crosses several working weeks, see how the platform works can add the operational visibility needed to separate waiting time from active work.
For broader context beyond this collection, see the resources published by ASEAN.
Four items requested at the moment they were first wanted, and what that cost
The material certificates, asked for on the day of dispatch
8 / 5Three of the eight days were not working days on their side: the mill issues them weekly and the week had closed. They had existed since the material was rolled, six weeks earlier
The packing list, asked for when the ship arrived
4 / 2Two of the four days were not working days on their side: a weekend. Written by the shop on the day they packed
The inspection report, asked for when the broker queried it
6 / 3Three of the six days were not working days on their side: their own three-day queue. Finished and filed eleven days before anybody asked
The revised drawing, asked for once cutting had started
9 / 6Three of the nine days were not working days on their side: a holiday and a reviewer's absence. Needed on day one and not noticed until day nine
four waits · 27 calendar days · 16 of them working days on the other side
Not one of these four was slow to produce. Three of them already existed when they were asked for, and the fourth could have been asked for at the start. One team's own job.
A great deal of waiting is spent on things that already existed when they were asked for.
The certificate was issued six weeks ago. The packing list was written on the day the crate was closed. The report was filed before anybody knew it would be needed. None of them was slow; all of them were requested late.
Why requests arrive late
Because the moment a thing becomes necessary and the moment it becomes knowable are different, and the request naturally attaches to the first.
The certificates become necessary at dispatch. They become knowable at the point the order is placed, because every order of that kind needs them. Six weeks sit between the two, and the request is made in the wrong one.
This is not carelessness. Asking for something you do not yet need feels like making work, and a long list of pre-emptive requests is a real imposition on a counterparty. The skill is in distinguishing the things that genuinely should be asked for early from the things that should not.
The test
Ask early for anything that satisfies both of these: it will certainly be needed, and it already exists or will exist before you ask.
Certificates, drawings, specifications, packing lists, licences, reports, previous correspondence — all of these are produced as a by-product of work that has already happened. Asking for them costs the other side a retrieval rather than a production.
Do not ask early for things that have to be made: decisions, approvals, quotations, anything requiring judgement. Those are a real cost to the other party, and asking before you need them wastes their effort and spends your standing.
The standing request
For anything that recurs, the efficient form is a standing instruction rather than a repeated request.
For every order from now on, please send the material certificates with the dispatch note rather than waiting for us to ask.
One sentence, said once, removes the request from every subsequent order. Most suppliers agree immediately, because being asked for the same document forty times a year is more annoying to them than sending it unprompted.
| Document | When it exists | When it is usually asked for |
|---|---|---|
| Material certificate | At the mill, weeks before | At dispatch |
| Packing list | When the crate is closed | When the ship arrives |
| Inspection report | When the inspection is done | When somebody queries it |
| Drawing revision history | Continuously | During a dispute |
Looking one step further down your own chain
The second half of this is internal and is the part more often missed.
Whoever is next in your own process knows what they will need, and they know it before you do. Asking them — what will you want from this supplier in three weeks that you do not have — produces a list, and the list can go out in a single message now rather than as four requests spread over a month.
That conversation takes five minutes and is rarely had, because the person three weeks downstream has no reason to raise it until the moment they need something.
The limit of this
It can be overdone, and overdoing it has a specific failure mode.
A counterparty asked for everything that might conceivably be needed starts treating requests as a routine to be worked through rather than as things somebody is waiting on. When the genuinely urgent request arrives it sits in the same queue as the speculative ones.
The practical ceiling is roughly: ask early for the documents that exist, once, in one message, and ask for nothing else before it is needed.
The audit worth doing once
Take the last three things you waited more than a week for and establish, for each, when it first existed.
The answer is instructive. In a large proportion of cases the thing was sitting in a drawer on the other side for most of the period in question, and the delay was not a delay at all but a late question.
The counterparty's version of the same thing
This runs in both directions, and offering it unprompted is one of the cheapest things a supplier can do.
Sending the material certificates with the dispatch note rather than waiting to be asked costs nothing and removes a request, a wait and a chase from the customer's month. The same applies to packing lists, test reports and anything else produced as a by-product of work that has already been done.
Most suppliers do not do this, not out of reluctance but because nobody has told them which documents the customer will eventually need. The customer knows and assumes it is obvious.
One conversation settles it for the life of the relationship: here is the list of documents we always end up asking for, please send them without being asked. It is agreed immediately in nearly every case.