AI for procurement managers: OTIF, price increases and contract renewals, answered from your own files

Three POs are past due and only one of them matters, because it is single source and it is past its confirmed date rather than an optimistic ATP date. That distinction is the whole job, and it is buried in a column most people skim. By the time planning escalates it on Monday morning, the expedite call you should have made on Friday is a week late and the supplier has already committed their capacity elsewhere. You are not missing the data. You are missing the half hour to cross-read the OTIF sheet against the open PO list before the week starts.

The letter quotes a category index and a percentage that sounds reasonable in isolation. What kills you is the stacking: this increase on the same part sits on top of two earlier hikes, and nobody has ever laid the three side by side with dates and PO numbers. HBR describes AI moving into exactly this territory, supporting substantive negotiation decisions rather than clerical ones, yet the buyer walks into the QBR with the supplier's number because reconstructing their own paid price means opening three folders. Swallowing an increase unprepared is margin gone for the rest of the year.

The renewal you meant to renegotiate auto-extends because the notice window closed six weeks before the end date and the register lives in a folder nobody opens between signings. The same folder holds the answer to the question you needed in the QBR: whether there is an index clause or a cap that makes this increase contestable in the first place. Missing a notice date is not a dramatic failure, which is why it keeps happening, and it quietly removes your only real leverage for another twelve months.

Ask what puts next week's production at risk and you get the specific PO, the supplier, whether it is single source, how far it is past the confirmed date (not the ATP date), and the explicit note that the other open orders still have buffer. Read from the OTIF sheet and the open PO list on your own machine, with the file and version named so you can verify the single-source flag before you call. You still make the expedite call. What changes is that you make it on Friday instead of hearing about it on Monday.

Ask what you actually paid for this part and you get the price history stacked: each increase with its date and PO number, the cumulative percentage, and what the new rate costs on your annual volume in euros. If the contract holds an index or cap clause, it points you at the clause and the page. That turns a defensive QBR into a specific conversation about one part number and one number you can both check. The synthesis you used to build across three folders is assembled the moment you ask.

Ask which agreements renew in the next quarter and you get the end dates, the notice windows that close first, and which ones auto-extend if nothing happens, with the source document named. It shows the dates and the clause language; the decision to renegotiate, consolidate or walk stays yours. It is also honest about the messy cases: where the register is incomplete or a contract is missing, it says so rather than filling the gap with something plausible.