Special fasteners with short lead times: when three days make a difference in production

Managing special fasteners with short lead times often means working on already planned supply schedules.

In this case, the request came after planning had been finalised: to bring forward the delivery of a supply for the railway sector by three days.

A small change on paper, but necessary to ensure the on-time execution of an already scheduled contract and to keep the next stages of the project aligned.

Production planning and priority management

Bringing a delivery forward by three days may seem marginal. In complex production systems, it is often a critical issue. Activities are tightly scheduled: supply, surface treatments, machining and deliveries are all interconnected.

Reducing lead times means working within an established balance.That’s why providing special fasteners with short lead time is a real challenge.

The supply consisted of 36,000 special fastening components for the railway sector:

• 12,000 washers
• 12,000 M10 x 16 screws
• 6,000 M6 x 8 screws
• 6,000 M6 x 10 screws

The material, already prepared for final Geomet® treatment, was fully aligned with the original plan.

Supply chain coordination and operational management

The request required coordinated action across the entire supply chain: reprioritising suppliers, managing processing stages and directly overseeing key logistics steps.

This allowed time to be recovered from the early phases of the process.

The most critical phase came at the end. On Friday morning at 8:30am, the goods were available at our warehouse. From that moment, less than two hours remained to complete all shipping activities: quality control, sorting, packing, labelling and documentation.

36,000 parts were sorted and processed with no margin for error in 46 minutes, under significant operational pressure.

Thanks to coordinated teamwork and a flexible organisation, the shipment was dispatched on time. At 12:30pm, the goods were delivered to the customer.

Not only meeting the revised request, but achieving delivery three days ahead of the updated schedule.

This result was made possible by EFS’s supply chain management, ensuring quality, control and operational continuity even in critical situations.

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