LOCRAI team10 min read
Delivery notes in manufacturing and construction: when the dock becomes the bottleneck
Sites, production lines, suppliers that change every week: delivery notes are not only a courier topic. How to get quantities and codes into the system without retyping every slip.
Delivery notes are often discussed for logistics and distribution. But packing slips also hit manufacturing (raw materials, components, subcontracting) and construction (site materials, steel, concrete, rentals). Volume can be uneven — which makes data entry worse: peaks, unpredictable layouts, urgency to keep stock or the site up to date.
Why template OCR barely holds here
In these sectors suppliers are many and documents rarely standard: site printers, email PDFs, photos of the slip, attachments with broken tables. One template per supplier does not scale — it becomes permanent maintenance.
What you actually need from the slip
- Who delivers and when
- PO or site/job reference when present
- Lines: description, code, quantity, unit
- Lots or packages when the process needs them
- A confidence signal: what is safe vs what needs a quick review
A realistic path
You do not need to digitise «the whole supply chain» in month one. Start with the noisiest channel: suppliers with the most slips per week, or the site with the most disputes. AI extraction → review only on exceptions → data into the warehouse or site system.
On site and on the line, delay is not administrative: it is material that does not show up — or shows up wrong.
Link to accounts payable
After the slip, the invoice often follows. If delivery-note data is already structured, matching to PO and invoice is less contentious — and less dependent on who «remembers» what came in.
For pure logistics see delivery-note automation; to reconcile the three documents, PO–delivery note–invoice matching. Demo on your PDFs: contact.
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