Expedited orders are often seen as a necessary evil in the steel and building materials industry. Customers push. Sales teams commit. And operations scrambles to make it happen—usually at a high cost.
But here’s the problem: the real cost of expedites is rarely captured in the moment. Overtime, excess freight, productivity disruption—it all adds up. And over time, it becomes a hidden drain on your margin, your morale, and your operational sanity.
As a VP, reducing expedites isn’t about saying “no” to your customers. It’s about building a smarter, more responsive system that prevents the need for heroics in the first place.
What Expedites Really Cost
Let’s get clear on the true impact:
Premium Freight: Last-minute shipments cost more. Whether it’s air freight, hot shots, or rerouted deliveries, these charges cut straight into margin.
Labor Overtime: Weekend and after-hours work to meet rush deadlines means higher wages—and higher burnout.
Schedule Disruption: Expedites often bump scheduled jobs, creating a domino effect of delays and inefficiencies.
Inventory Imbalance: Materials may be pulled out of sequence, throwing off usage plans and leading to stockouts or overages.
Customer Confusion: When delivery dates shift or orders go incomplete due to reshuffling, customer satisfaction takes a hit.
And yet, in many organizations, these costs are absorbed silently—because the focus is on saving the sale, not evaluating the long-term impact.
Why Expedites Happen in the First Place
Expedites usually signal a breakdown somewhere upstream:
Inaccurate forecasts or demand planning
Overpromising by sales without capacity insight
Poor coordination between departments
Inflexible scheduling that can’t handle shifts in priority
If you’re seeing a rise in expedite requests, don’t just push back—investigate. There’s always a root cause.
Step One: Bring Visibility to the Problem
You can’t fix what you can’t see. Most VPs underestimate how many expedites their teams are managing each month because the data is fragmented.
Use your ERP, TMS, and AI tools to surface:
The number of expedite requests
The types of jobs being expedited
The customers making repeat requests
The operational and financial cost per expedite
When you have this visibility, the issue becomes measurable—and solvable.
Step Two: Redesign the Quoting and Order Intake Process
Sales teams don’t intend to create chaos. They’re trying to close business. But if they don’t understand the downstream impact of a rush order, they can’t make informed decisions.
Empower them with:
Real-time capacity views
Alerts when a job would trigger overtime or disrupt flow
Tiered service levels that include premium pricing for expedite speed
This doesn’t just prevent bad promises—it builds internal discipline and external credibility.
Step Three: Build Flex into the Schedule
Rigid schedules are fragile. One disruption can throw off the whole week. By contrast, agile scheduling—powered by AI—allows for:
Dynamic re-sequencing of jobs
Visibility into machine availability across facilities
Predictive forecasting of high-risk jobs likely to miss their window
With this kind of agility, your team can absorb last-minute changes without crisis mode.
Step Four: Segment Customers and Orders
Not all customers should be treated equally when it comes to urgency. High-value accounts, strategic partnerships, and long-term volume contracts may justify more flexibility.
Use data to:
Prioritize expedite slots based on customer value
Identify customers abusing expedite privileges
Create enforceable guidelines for when and how rush orders are accepted
This keeps your resources focused on the right business.
Step Five: Turn Lessons Into Strategy
Every expedite should become a learning opportunity. Track why it happened, what it cost, and what could have prevented it.
Over time, this insight can:
Influence stocking strategies
Guide investment in flexible equipment
Improve sales planning and forecasting
Reduce surprise demand with smarter customer engagement
Culture Shift: From Firefighting to Forward Planning
VPs have the authority—and responsibility—to set the tone. A culture addicted to heroics is not sustainable. But a culture that values planning, coordination, and smart use of resources? That’s where profitable, scalable operations thrive.
Start by celebrating successful preventions, not just successful rescues. Recognize teams that catch expedite risks early and solve them upstream. Make that the new standard.
Final Thought: Run the Play, Not the Fire Drill
Expedites might win a deal today, but they chip away at your performance over time. They make every job feel urgent, every plan feel temporary, and every shift feel overworked.
The goal isn’t to eliminate expedites entirely—that’s not realistic in this industry. But you can reduce them, price them correctly, and manage them without letting them derail your operations.
As a VP, that’s your lane: turning last-minute chaos into long-term control. When you stop normalizing expedites and start systemizing around them, everything runs better—faster, smarter, and with stronger margins.
