How to Promise a Customer a Delivery Date Without Calling the Shop Floor

Late on a Tuesday afternoon, a customer calls to ask when her order will ship. A customer service representative opens the order and sees a promise date of Friday. The rep knows that the date was set three weeks ago and does not trust it. The rep tells the customer ‘let me call you back’.


The rep walks out to the floor and finds the supervisor standing with an operator at a down machine. Supervisor looks at the whiteboard, thinks for a moment and says that Thursday should be fine. The rep returns to the desk and gives the customer Thursday.


On Thursday, the parts are still being finished at an outside vendor. The supervisor was aware it needed to go to the vendor last week, but it did not cross his mind on Tuesday. The customer calls again, and this time the voice on the phone is a little less friendly.


If you run a make-to-order company, this story may sound familiar. Each person gave the best answer they could with the data they had. The trouble is that they relied on memory, not the best place to keep a promise.


A representative loses twenty minutes, and a supervisor loses concentration. Two people give the same customer two different dates. Over time, the team adapts to add a few days buffer to every promise, so even the best news becomes less accurate.


A customer who has been let down before, now constantly calls. They say ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease’. Some Jobs begin to move because someone ‘squeaked’, even though another job had priority. Each move makes the other dates less reliable, and those delays results in more customer calls.


You will not notice this result as a lost order. What you will eventually see is when a good customer quietly asks another supplier to quote work they used to automatic  ally send to you.


When the supervisor answers that question, he is gathering facts from several data silos as well as memory and concludes a judgment. The sales order holds the promise. The work order holds the steps. A purchase order holds the date that raw material should arrive. The supervisor was connecting the dots in their head, usually while doing something else.


A promise date calculated manually is the conclusion drawn from multiple sources.

Even the best ERP for make-to-order companies knows only what your staff have told it, and only as accurate as the most recent update. If work is reported at the end of the week, then on Tuesday the system is still reporting data from last week.

Is auto-calculating promise date in a make-to-order company possible?

Ask these 3 questions:

Where is the job right now? All responses depend on this. ERP systems know a job’s status from the work reported on the floor. Before you trust the query, review when it was last updated. A record that is two days old will give you an answer that is two days old. 

What else does the job still require? Which remaining steps, material not yet received, outside vendors, inspection, paperwork, etc. Broken promises have a habit of hiding between the cracks. Any job can appear nearly finished even though one small step is constraining completion. 

Which step is ahead? A job with two hours of work left can wait four days behind other jobs that are fighting for the same resources (machines, people, materials). 

One routine for four common calls: The routine is the same each time. Find out where the job is, what it still needs and what is ahead of it. Then give the customer the date and the reason together. The answers below are only examples, but they show how the routine works.

Scenario 1: The job is already running.

  • Where it is: The job is on the second of four steps.
  • What it needs: It needs two more steps and a final inspection.
  • What is ahead: One other job is waiting for the last machine.
  • What to say: “Your order is in production now and has two steps left. One job is ahead of it at the final step, so we expect to ship on Thursday.”

Scenario 2: The job is waiting on material or an outside shop.

  • Where it is: The job is not moving. 
  • What it needs: It needs material that is due from a supplier on Monday, followed by three days of work. Ask your buyer to confirm the supplier’s date, since an old date is only a hope. 
  • What is ahead: Your planner has held a place for the job once the material arrives. 
  • What to say: “Your order is waiting on material that is due Monday. We need three working days after it arrives, so I expect to ship on Thursday of next week. I will confirm that on Monday.” 

Scenario 3: The customer has not ordered yet.

  • Where it is: The job does not exist yet, so the answer comes from what the job would require. 
  • What it needs: It needs every step, and your estimator or planner will know how long those steps usually take. Check whether the material is in stock. 
  • What is ahead: Look at the open work on your busiest machine, since that machine will likely decide the date. 
  • What to say: “We have the material in stock, and our main work centre is booked for about two weeks. If you order today, I can offer you the 24th.” 

How Infor Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) handles this?

In Infor CloudSuite Industrial APS, these real-world operational scenarios translate directly into automated system workflows powered by real-time shop floor reporting and live planning algorithms. Active in-production jobs continuously update their projected completion dates as operation transactions are logged against routings, while jobs delayed by suppliers or subcontractors trigger automated exception messages if expected purchase receipts or vendor delivery dates slip. When quoting or entering new orders, sales representatives run Available-to-Promise (ATP) or Capable-to-Promise (CTP) checks directly on the order line; this launches the system's three-pass engine—evaluating inventory, component BOMs, and work center capacity constraints—to instantly calculate a trustworthy, mathematically feasible promise date without manual guessing.

Scenario 4: Your ERP does not work as it is supposed to.


  • Where it is: The system says that the job has not started, but the parts are sitting at the third machine. For this call, trust what your supervisor can see on the floor. 
  • What it needs: Ask your production controller to confirm the remaining steps, because the record may be wrong about those as well. 
  • What is ahead: Ask your planner for the actual order of the work, since the sequence in your ERP software’s production planning may also be out of date. 

One wrong record may be a simple mistake. The same error on several jobs suggests a larger problem in the way the system is set up or used. If you have an ERP administrator, that person can help you find the cause. 

Sometimes the system will not be able to answer one of the three questions. When that happens, your representative should still call the floor, because the customer deserves a true answer. The rep should also write down which fact she could not find. Those notes will show what to fix first. 

What to do this week?

Choose one open order with a promise date in the next two weeks. Sit down with your customer service representative and search for the answer of three questions using only your ERP system. Then walk out to the floor and compare the answers with what is actually happening. 

Write down the first question that stopped her and the reason it did. If the system gave her an answer that turned out to be wrong, write that down too. That one note is all you need, and the whole exercise should take less than an hour. You can do it with whichever ERP or make-to-order manufacturing software you use today.

When your note points to a bigger question

Your note may point to how your ERP system is set up or used. It may also show that the system can't answer one of the three questions.

If you start looking at other systems, begin with that note. An ERP evaluation with Essential Software Solutions (ESS) looks for the few measurable requirements that are unique to your plant. Then someone who trains users on the system works through your scenarios, in place of a sales demo. Your open order and its three questions make a ready scenario.

We're a certified Infor ERP partner, but Infor may not be the right fit for every company. If another system suits you better, we'll guide you there.