Find the bottleneck before combining departments
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Each department may have a workable local schedule. Combining them can send both streams through one inspection desk, finishing area or approval route. Find that shared handoff before customers discover it through missed dates.
Choose representative orders from both departments and follow them to accepted completion. Include the work between obvious operations: waiting for information, checking a result and resolving an exception can all affect when the next person can proceed.
Draw one route for the combined work
Mark where the streams meet. At each shared point, ask who receives the work, what information must accompany it and who chooses the next job. Record how completed work leaves that point as well.
A machine count does not reveal an approval queue. The combined-capacity guide checks the assumptions behind total output, while this review examines the route through the proposed shared operation.
Use actual job states. "At inspection" can mean waiting for a person, waiting for a document or awaiting an authorised decision about an exception. Those positions need different responses.
A fictional queue with two local priorities
Department A has promised a customer an urgent completion on Tuesday. Department B has already scheduled an accepted job through the same retained inspection function on Monday. Each department's plan assumes its job receives priority.
The business needs to reconcile the commitments before moving the work. The relevant contacts establish the actual tasks, evidence and available capacity, then agree the authorised next steps. The inspection team should not have to resolve a commercial conflict by choosing whichever supervisor calls first.
Use the combined order-book rules to define that decision route. Where customer commitments need changing, obtain the appropriate agreement and advice instead of treating an internal schedule as permission.
Test a proposed remedy through the whole route
Adding capacity at the shared point may be one option for competent assessment. It may also move the queue to a later stage. Trace the proposed change through finishing, release and despatch before recording the problem as resolved.
The shared-support task review helps identify work that a local team previously absorbed without a formal request. If that team disappears, the task needs a real receiving owner.
Keep the review at the level of business dependencies. Layout, safe working methods and technical process changes require the responsible specialists. A route sketch is not an instruction to alter equipment or working areas.
Once the combined operation has an agreed arrangement, update the equipment requirement. Discuss confirmed surplus with UK Auction Group, stating any unresolved dependency that affects availability.
At the next project meeting, bring evidence about the actual shared handoff rather than a general statement that consolidation is progressing. The owner can then see whether the proposed smaller operation has a workable route from accepted order to completed delivery.
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