Order desk automation for light industrial: a 200-person factory case

The order desk at a 200-person light industrial company is one of those quietly heavy functions. Inbound RFQs from distributors, order confirmations, supplier coordination, customs paperwork, multi-language email with EU and CIS clients. It typically eats two FTEs and is the team’s top burnout source. Eighty percent of it is patternable, and that’s where AI agents live.

The actual workload

For a representative 200-person manufacturer with ~€15M revenue:

• 40–70 RFQs per week to evaluate and quote.
• 120–180 order confirmations to draft and send.
• ~50 supplier-side coordination emails.
• ~80 customer follow-ups per week.
• 15–20 "where is my shipment?" inquiries.

Total: roughly 22 hours/week of one ops manager’s time, on top of the work they should be doing (process improvement, supplier negotiation, customer relationships).

What the agent team handles

Ops AI Agents Team for this client structure runs:

• RFQ ingestion: incoming email → structured data → pricing lookup → draft quote.
• Order confirmations: standard templates filled with order specifics, shipping ETAs from ERP.
• Multi-language reply: agents draft in English, German, French, Russian, Ukrainian.
• Shipment status replies: automated lookup in tracking system, customer reply.
• Supplier coordination: chase suppliers on PO confirmations, escalate delays to ops manager.

Everything routes through the operator queue for approval, but approval is fast (5–10 seconds per item) compared to drafting from scratch (5–10 minutes each).

What stays manual

• Pricing decisions for non-standard quotes.
• Quality complaints and any commercial disputes.
• New supplier vetting.
• Customer escalations to ops manager.

Numbers

Before: 22 hours/week of ops manager time on order desk. After deployment: 4–5 hours/week. Reclaimed 17 hours for higher-value work. Customer reply SLA improved from 6–8 hours to <1 hour. RFQ response improved similarly.

Net: one ops manager doing the work that used to require 1.5 FTEs, with shorter cycle time and better customer experience.