Playbook: the same delay keeps coming back — find the cause

The situation

A manufacturing order is 15.3 days late. Last month it was another order, and another excuse. The question nobody can answer from the order list: *what do the late orders have in common?*

Step 1 — Why this order is late

Open the manufacturing order and choose the Process tab.

Otiox explains the delay from recorded facts: 19 days waiting for material from a purchase order, 18.8 days with the CNC machine down — 100% explained, with strong confidence. The causes overlap in time, so their days add up to more than the delay; the page says so.

Step 2 — Investigate across all late orders

Open Command → Investigations and start one — *Why is production late?*

Otiox collects the late cases (here nine of nine recent builds) and ranks suspects — a machine, a product, a supplier, a component — by how often they appear in late cases compared with all cases. Each is a hypothesis until you add evidence and mark it supported or refuted.

Why it matters

Causality is the difference between fixing a case and fixing a process. Because Otiox links each order to its material, machine, inspection and supplier, it can measure which link actually carries the delay.

What you have at the end

• Every late order explained in days, by cause.
• Hypotheses tested against all orders, not anecdotes.
• One supported cause to fix — for every future order.

Screenshots come from the Otiox demo workspace. Choose Switch to demo in the sidebar to follow along; changes there never touch live data. Command reads your records and never changes them.