A quarter in one factory.
Not a client. A story built from what keeps happening in factories that make parts to order.
220 people make plastic and metal parts that go into other companies’ machines.
Three big customers buy most of what they make.
About a tenth of every sale is profit.
Everyone is busy. Nobody is careless.
Plastic resin, the factory’s main raw material, goes up 12%.
The buyer pays it. He has to, or the lines stop.
The contract lets the factory raise its price when resin goes up.
Everyone assumes someone else has asked the customer.
Nobody has.
Forty thousand parts ship at the old price.
Planning, sales and accounts each check their own numbers. Each number looks fine.
The owner asks: “Resin went up in April. Did we ever ask for the increase?”
Silence. Three people start searching old emails.
They find the contract. It has a catch: the claim must be made within 60 days of the rise.
It is day 74.
That money is gone, and it never comes back.
On this customer, resin is 40% of what each part costs to make. The rise ate close to half the profit on every part.
Resin goes up again, another 6%.
The 60 day clock starts again.
This time, someone else is watching it.
Early North reads the last quarter, from the first order to the last payment.
Six leaks show up. Late price claims are the biggest by far.
The team wanted faster quotes fixed first. That’s the pain they feel every day. The money said otherwise.
Early North checks resin prices every week against each contract.
When a price crosses the line in a contract, the claim is drafted with the proof attached.
The finance head checks it. The commercial head sends it.
Snag: the contracts were in four different formats. Tidying them took two weeks.
Snag: the first alerts went off at every tiny move. The finance head set the level that matters.
Snag: one customer only accepts claims through its own website. A person still uploads it.
The October claim goes out.
The customer pushes back.
The proof is already attached: the published resin price, the contract clause, the cost sheet.
One call later, they accept.
The October rise is recovered. The April one never will be.
The engineer who rebuilt price sheets every quarter now spends that time on quotes.
Next on the list: payments that arrive short.