Critical Path Action

The critical path prompt appears below the ETA card on the job detail page. It identifies the single action that, if completed now, would do the most to protect your ship date. Instead of showing you a list of everything that needs doing, it tells you what to do first.

Reading the Prompt

The prompt shows the blocker, a recommended action, and a slack value.

Slack is the number of days you can delay taking action before it starts pushing your ship date. A slack of 0 means the blocker is already on the critical path: any further delay directly extends Trajectory. A slack of 3 means you have three days before this item becomes the bottleneck.

Use slack to triage. If you have several items competing for your attention, tackle the zero-slack ones before moving to higher-slack items.

The Create PO Button

When the recommended action is to place a purchase order, a Create PO button appears inline. Clicking it opens a draft PO with the supplier and unit price pre-filled from your purchase history for that material or part.

The draft is never sent automatically. You review it, adjust quantity or pricing if needed, and send it yourself. This keeps you in control while cutting out the setup time of building the PO from scratch.

The Snooze Button

Snooze hides the current prompt for 24 hours. It applies only to that specific blocker, not to the job as a whole. If a different item becomes the top blocker before the 24 hours are up, the prompt will update to show the new one.

Use Snooze when you have already taken action but the system has not caught up yet, or when you know the blocker resolves itself tomorrow and the prompt is adding noise. Do not use it to defer decisions: a snoozed blocker with zero slack will still slip your ship date.

How the System Picks the Blocker

The engine evaluates all open blockers and ranks them by which one, if resolved today, would pull in your Trajectory date the most. Ties are broken in this order:

Longest remaining path through dependent work orders
Greatest cost savings from early resolution (avoiding rush fees, for example)
Action type: purchasing actions come before scheduling actions, which come before supplier follow-ups

The result is always a single item. This is intentional. A list of ten blockers is harder to act on than one clear next step.

"Pick a Supplier" Prompts

If the prompt reads "Pick a supplier," the system has no supplier on file for that material or purchased item. There is no purchase history to draw from, so it cannot pre-fill a PO or estimate lead time.

To resolve it:

Open the relevant RFQ or purchase order for that item.
Select a supplier from your supplier list, or add a new one in the Suppliers section.
Refresh the ETA. The engine will re-evaluate the blocker with the lead time from the chosen supplier.

If you regularly buy a material from the same supplier, adding it to your supplier catalog prevents this prompt from appearing on future jobs.