A multi-site fulfillment operator replaced dispatch logic with a single decision agent. What broke first was not the model — it was approval boundaries nobody had written down.
Starting with dispatch, not everything
The client had 32 SOPs across sites that disagreed on the same decision. We scoped one workflow: dispatch routing for inbound exceptions.
Everything else stayed manual until the first role had a manager and a KPI.
What broke in week two
Edge cases around carrier cutoffs exposed missing approval rules. The agent routed correctly by data but violated an unwritten regional policy.
Fix was a human-in-the-loop gate for exceptions over a dollar threshold — not retraining the model.
What they kept after we left
Weekly escalation review, a single dispatch KPI, and a living org chart with one agent column. The SOP count dropped because decisions had an owner again.
Production wins look boring: fewer documents, clearer owners, measurable exceptions.