You don't know exactly what has gone out to subcontractors

Surface treatment, grinding, heat treatment, paint: parts leave the building, and the only tracking is a shared spreadsheet updated whenever someone remembers.

Thirty minutes, no commitment

Describe your flow. I'll tell you what can be automated and where I would start.

The question comes up in the production meeting: « the housings for job 4412, are they back from galvanising? ». Three people open the same spreadsheet, two of them don't have the latest version, and somebody ends up phoning the subcontractor for the answer.

This is not a discipline problem. It is a tooling problem: a shared spreadsheet has no concept of a due date, no chasing, no locking, no history. It records an intention, not a state.

What it looks like in your shop

The file has a « due back » column that is never current

The date is the one quoted at the outset. When the subcontractor slips three days by phone, the information stays in the head of whoever picked up. The column becomes a wish rather than data, and everyone knows it — so nobody relies on it any more.

You discover the delay on the day of assembly

The works order is ready to move on, the operator goes to fetch the bin, and the bin is still at the subcontractor. The machine is already set, the schedule is already made. It is the worst moment to learn this and it is the usual one.

Quantities come back short without anyone recording it

42 parts went out, 40 came back. Two were scrapped at the subcontractor, or lost, or left in a bin. The discrepancy surfaces at assembly, sometimes weeks later, when nobody can say what happened and the invoice has already been paid.

The subcontractor's delivery note is matched against nothing

It arrives with the parts, goes to the office, and gets matched against the purchase order and the invoice — or not — several weeks later. Price or quantity discrepancies slip through because nobody has time to re-check line by line.

The real cost of the outside operation is not in your job costing

The job is costed against an estimate in which subcontracting appears as a theoretical figure. Transport, rework and delays appear nowhere. You believe you are making margin on those parts and you have no idea.

What it actually costs

Here the main cost is not data entry time. It is the decisions taken on false information.

Time spent finding where parts are: 2 to 5 hours per weekCalls, emails, checks, meetings that drag on. Count the people in the room when the question comes up: that is the real hourly cost.
Emergency rescheduling: 1 to 3 per week in a 30-person shopEach reschedule displaces two or three other jobs, adds a setup, and stretches the lead time another customer sees.
Undetected quantity discrepancies: 0.5 to 2% of subcontracted partsA figure to check in your own shop: compare three months of outbound and inbound note quantities. Many shops have never run that check and discover the gap doing it.
Late deliveries caused by subcontracting: the leading cause in many SMEsLook at your last ten late deliveries and note the cause. If more than half come from an outside operation, you know where to put the effort.

There is a less visible cost: caution. Without a reliable view, you build margin into the lead times you quote, you release earlier, you tie up work in progress. That is cash sitting on pallets.

How it gets fixed

You don't need a collaborative portal with your subcontractors — they won't use it. You need your own building to know what is out, with no extra effort.

1. Parts leaving becomes a recorded event
As the bin leaves, you record the works order, the quantity, the subcontractor, the operation and the expected return date. One scan and one screen, thirty seconds at the loading bay. From that moment the information exists somewhere other than in an email.
2. One screen answers « what is out? »
A view sorted by return date, with anything overdue at the top. It is displayed in production and readable by sales admin, who no longer has to cross the shop to answer a customer. The spreadsheet disappears, not because it is banned, but because it is no longer useful.
3. Chasers go out automatically
Three days before the due date, an email goes to the subcontractor with the precise list of what is expected. It is basic and it changes the most: chasing no longer depends on whoever thinks of it. Subcontractors get used to it quickly, and generally appreciate it.
4. Returns are quantity-checked immediately
On receipt, you record the quantity that actually came back. Any discrepancy is flagged straight away, while the driver is still there and the subcontractor still remembers the batch. The delivery note is linked to the purchase order, which sets up the invoice match.

The result is not a pretty dashboard: it is that the question stops being asked in the meeting.

What this does not fix

What this does not fix:

It does not make your subcontractors punctual. It lets you know that they aren't, early enough to react — and, over a year, to show them figures instead of an impression.
It does not replace a phone call when a part is critical. It saves you calling about the other forty.
If your works orders are not reliable, subcontracting tracking will not be either: it rests on them.
This is not a supplier portal. Getting your subcontractors to enter data in your tool is an attractive idea that almost always fails between 20 and 250 employees: they have their own tools and their own priorities.
It does not calculate your full job cost. It supplies some of the data currently missing to do that properly.

The questions I get asked

What does it cost?

The two-day audit is €1,500. A subcontracting-tracking project is one of the shortest: typically €8,000 to €10,000 fixed price, because the scope is clean and the data already exists.

How long before it runs?

Three weeks, often less. This is typically the first project I recommend when management wants to check the method works before committing further.

Do our subcontractors have to use anything?

No. They receive readable chaser emails, that is all. Any design that requires a habit change from a third party you are not paying for that is a fragile design.

Our ERP has a subcontracting module — why not use it?

If you have one, we start by looking at why it isn't used. In half of cases it demands a purchase order for every outbound movement, which is too heavy day to day and explains the abandonment. Sometimes it can be lightened and put back into service, which costs less than building alongside it.

Do we need to buy hardware?

A scanner and a terminal at the bay are usually enough, for a few hundred euros. You buy it directly; I take no margin on hardware.

What if you're no longer available?

The code, documentation and credentials are yours and everything runs on your infrastructure. Another supplier can pick it up: it is readable, documented code, not a closed platform.

Who owns the code?

You do — the assignment is written into the quotation.

In your trade

This job is not equally urgent everywhere. These pages say where it sits in the running order, trade by trade.

Let's talk for thirty minutes

You describe your flow, I tell you what can be automated, what cannot, and where I would start. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so during the call.