The day cheap parts get expensive

Imagine you are a hardware founder. An order is about to ship next week. 10K units, $100 gross margin each. About $1M in gross margin that you expect to turn in one or two months. The future finally looks brighter.

The next day, the factory messages you: 
"We cannot start assembly because the connector boards are not here."

You ping the board supplier. 
Good news: they finish making your boards tomorrow, on time. 
Bad news: QC is fully booked now, so they will only ship next week.

You push, they are at capacity, end of year, lots of backlog. The earliest they can ship to your assembly line is next Tuesday. You agree with the assembly factory to start next Thursday. You are already 10 days late, but still alive.

Next Thursday, you ask for an update. 
No assembly again. 
Fifty workers are sitting at their stations with nothing to do. Connectors are still in transit.

You go back to the board supplier. 
Yes, they finished QC and packing on Tuesday. But it was late in the day, so they shipped on Wednesday. And to save you a bit of money, they chose a cheaper shipping method that takes three extra days.

Now the boards arrive only in the middle of next week. 
The assembly factory is angry: they held capacity for you, burned two days of labor, and now refuse to promise a new start date until the boards are at their dock.

Your order slips by about four weeks. Your inventory will run out at least two weeks before the next batch arrives. To avoid stockouts, you pull back on ads and pay for emergency air freight on the whole lot.

This is how a small, cheap part plus fuzzy dates turns into a very expensive problem.

This can be prevented. Here's how:

1. Always agree on the date when the component is in your warehouse or at your assembly line, not when it is "finished". For every critical part, ask for three dates: production complete, ship date, and ETA to your factory or warehouse. Put those dates into the PO (Purchase Order)
2. Always make clear the shipping method and your tolerance for delay. Tell the supplier when a slip is unacceptable and add a line in PO like: "No changes to shipping method or ship date without approval."

You cannot remove every delay. But these two small precautions can save you a lot of trouble. Keep every component delivery date explicit, confirmed, and communicated, instead of letting it slide.