The average manufacturing buyer now commits to capital equipment 171 days ahead of need, and 27% of them commit more than a year out. Those two numbers sit in the Buying Policy table on the last page of the ISM Manufacturing Report On Business, below the commodity lists, below the industry quotes, below everything the wire services quote. The PMI headline (54.6 in August) gets the coverage. The lead-time table is the part a plant buyer can actually use, because it moves two quarters before the price indices that end up in your escalation clause. This debrief covers the August table, the 19 years of history we rebuilt for the Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor, the backlog and tariff mechanics behind the days, the Supplier Deliveries index against the switchgear PPI, and, behind the wall, the three lines in the report that lead the PPI and by how many months.
Source: Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor (compiled from ISM Report on Business, Census M3, BLS PPI; as of August 2026)
Capex lead time was 147 days in December 2019, peaked at 186 days in June 2022, and has held between 165 and 179 days for every month since January 2023; production materials fell from a 100-day record to 84, MRO from 51 to 48 (data/ism-lead-times.csv, 212 monthly releases).
The Table Nobody Reads
ISM asks its manufacturing panel one plain question each month: how far ahead are you committing for capital expenditures, for production materials, and for MRO supplies. Answers land in six buckets, hand-to-mouth (counted as 5 days), 30, 60, 90, 180 and 360 days or more, and ISM publishes the percent in each bucket plus the weighted average. In August, capex answers split 18% hand-to-mouth, 3% at 30 days, 8% at 60, 13% at 90, 31% at six months and 27% at a year or more. The weighted average is 171 days. ISM notes the responses are raw, never revised and not seasonally adjusted, which is exactly why they are useful: nobody smooths them.
The 27% is the number that matters, not the 171. A weighted average of 171 days describes no actual buyer; it blends a hand-to-mouth bolt buyer with a plant waiting on a 2,500 kVA transformer. The Lead-Time Monitor publishes the class detail behind that blend: Schneider’s September guide puts LV switchgear at 45 to 50 weeks and switchboards at 18 to 34 weeks, and the sizing tool for a pad-mount runs the Transformer Sizing and Cost numbers against the same published lead times. The year-plus bucket in the ISM table is the electrical room, the chiller plant and the machine tool with a custom spindle. Everything else in a factory still ships inside two quarters.
ISM says it has collected Buying Policy since 1987, but the archive is members-only, so we rebuilt the series from every monthly release we could recover: May 2007 at 115 days, August 2010 at 127, September 2014 at 120, August 2018 at 144, and every month since. The whole file, month by month with the release URL on each row, is in data/ism-lead-times.csv and in the Monitor’s history tab. Two things stand out. Capex commitments lengthened by roughly 30 days across the 2010s before anyone said “supply chain”, and the pandemic step-up of 2021 to 2022 never reversed: three and a half years after the peak, the series is 24 days above its pre-pandemic level while materials and MRO have given most of theirs back.
Where the 171 Days Come From
The days are backlog. Census M3 tracks unfilled orders and shipments for NAICS 3353, the electrical equipment industry that makes transformers, switchgear, motors and generators, and the ratio of the two is the cleanest public measure of how many months of work the factories already hold.
Source: Census M3 NAICS 3353 via Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor
Unfilled orders at electrical equipment makers were $28.4 billion against $5.0 billion of monthly shipments in July 2026, 5.7 months of work, versus an average of 3.2 months in 2017 to 2019 and a peak of 7.1 months in October 2022. Shipments are up 45% from January 2019 in nominal dollars; unfilled orders are up 154%. The industry has added capacity and raised prices and still holds nearly twice the backlog it did before the boom. That is what a 171-day average and a 27% year-plus bucket look like from the seller’s side. The Book-to-Bill League Table shows the same shape one company at a time from filings, and the OEM Disclosure Scorecard marks which of those companies will tell a buyer a lead time at all.
The second source is the ISM commodities list, which the wire stories skip entirely. Each month ISM prints which commodities respondents report up in price, down in price and in short supply, with the count of consecutive months beside each.
Source: ISM Manufacturing Report On Business, August 2026, via Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor
Eight items were in short supply in August: electronic components for the 18th consecutive month, electrical components for the 14th, memory for the 8th, and copper, printed circuit boards, steel and tungsten products for the 2nd, plus labor for the first. Electrical components entered the list in July 2025 (the August 2025 report showed it at 2 months) and has not left. In the 2021 cycle the same line ran for 13 straight months by October 2021, the month ISM said production materials and MRO lead times were the longest since it began collecting the data in 1987. The month-by-month record of that one line is in data/electrical-components-short-supply-months.csv.
Source: ISM Manufacturing Report On Business, August 2026, via Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor
Aluminum has been reported up in price for 33 straight months, copper for 14, steel for 10, steel products for 9, electronic components and hot-rolled steel for 8, and 24 commodities were on the up list against two on the down list. A Machinery respondent put it directly: “Prices continue to rise on all goods. Suppliers are noting that energy, steel and labor costs are increasing very quickly.” The 33 months of aluminum start in December 2023, well before the current tariff schedule, and the tariffs then stacked on top: Section 232 steel and aluminum duties rose from 25% to 50% ad valorem effective June 4, 2025 (Proclamation of June 3, 2025, 90 FR 24199), and semi-finished copper and intensive copper derivatives took a 50% duty effective August 1, 2025 (Proclamation of July 30, 2025, 90 FR 37727). Copper’s 14 months on the up list begin in July 2025, the month before that proclamation took effect. The Tariff Exposure Calculator carries both instruments by HTS line, and the Copper and Wire Price Sheet turns the COMEX move into $/ft for a bid.
Supplier Deliveries and the Switchgear PPI
The headline table has one more line buyers should read before the PMI: Supplier Deliveries. It is the only ISM index that is inverted, above 50 means slower deliveries, and it is the one that speaks directly to lead time.
Source: Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor
Supplier Deliveries registered 59.3 in August, slowing for the ninth month in a row, against 51.3 in August 2025 and a 2023 low of 43.5. On the right panel, the switchgear PPI (WPU1175) was up 9.3% year over year in July 2026 and the transformer PPI (WPU117409) up 8.7%, after both ran at 20 to 43% in 2022. The two episodes on the chart behave differently by product. In 2020 to 2022, Supplier Deliveries went above 55 in February 2020, stayed there until September 2022 and peaked at 78.8 in May 2021; the transformer PPI passed 10% year over year in May 2021, the switchgear PPI not until January 2022. In 2025, Supplier Deliveries crossed 55 in April and the switchgear PPI stepped from 5.8% to 9.0% in the same month, then ran to 13.4% by February 2026, while transformers stayed under 6% until July 2026. Transformers move on copper and GOES steel almost immediately; switchgear moves on the backlog, two to three quarters later. The ISM Prices index (71.1 in August, second month at that level) has the same relationship with more lag, which is the subject of the paid section. Our piece on why switchgear costs 50% more than in 2021 decomposes the price move into copper, GOES steel and OEM margin; this one is about the timing signal that precedes it.
Why the lag exists is mundane. The PPI measures prices on shipments, and a switchgear lineup shipped in July 2026 was quoted 45 to 50 weeks earlier under Schneider’s guide, so July’s PPI reflects the pricing of the summer of 2025. ISM’s respondents answer about the month they are in. Whatever ISM’s panel reports about delivery speed and input prices today is what the PPI will report about shipments in two to four quarters. The Datacenter MEP Cost Table uses this lag to carry each electrical line item at the lead time it will actually ship at, not the price on the day the budget was set, and the Lead-Time-Adjusted Schedule turns the same published weeks into an energization month.
The Three Categories Are Three Different Problems
Production materials at 84 days and MRO at 48 are back near their long-run trend: materials averaged 64 days in 2018 and 2019, MRO 33, and both have settled 20 and 15 days above that. The gap is inventory policy, not scarcity. Respondents kept more weeks of cover after 2021 and never went back, and Customers’ Inventories at 42.8, “too low” for the 23rd month, says their customers are pulling that cover down again.
The long file makes the same point in a different way. In 2010 and 2011 the three lines averaged 111, 54 and 24 days; in 2018 and 2019, 146, 67 and 34 (data/ism-lead-times.csv). Capex commitments grew 35 days across a decade with no shortage, no tariff and no pandemic, because the equipment got more engineered and the factories that build it got fewer. The pandemic added 40 more days at the peak and left 24 of them behind. Anyone budgeting a 2027 project off a 2019 lead-time memory is 24 days late before the RFQ goes out, and off a 2012 memory, two months late.
Capex is a different problem. A 171-day average with 27% at a year or more means the queue is the product. Slots at Hitachi Energy, Siemens Energy, Eaton and Powell trade against deposits, and the $60 million deposit economy that grew up around datacenter electrical gear is now the environment a factory buyer bids into. The Wood Mackenzie 128 to 160 week transformer figures describe the top of the year-plus bucket; the ISM table describes how much of manufacturing has fallen into it. The Bid-Tab Price Book shows what public buyers have been paying for the gear at the front of that queue, and Quote Check puts a quote in hand against both the price band and the published lead time.
What to Do Monday
Read the table on the first business day of the month, before the PPI (mid-month) and before the Census M3 full report (the July M3 report landed September 2, the August one lands October 2). Four actions follow from the August numbers.
First, any capex line in the 2027 budget that touches the electrical room needs a PO or a slot reservation this quarter, because 171 days is the average and the electrical room is in the 27%. Run the schedule through the Lead-Time-Adjusted Schedule with the Monitor’s September published weeks and see which month the energization actually lands. Second, write the escalation clause against a named index and a named month: WPU1175 or WPU117409, base month equals quote month. With the PPI at 9% and the ISM Prices index at 71, an unindexed fixed price is a 9% gift to the vendor or a change-order fight, and the RFQ guide has the clause text. Third, put the tariff instrument in the quote: the 50% steel and aluminum rate and the 50% copper rate, by proclamation and effective date, so a pass-through claim mid-contract can be checked against the Tariff Exposure Calculator rather than argued. Fourth, add the ISM Buying Policy row to the monthly procurement report next to the PMI, with the three-month change beside it. It costs nothing, it arrives on the first business day, and it is the only free monthly number that describes your own queue rather than someone else’s output.
The paid section tests the report as a leading indicator. Across 2020 to 2026, the ISM Prices index led the transformer PPI’s year-over-year rate by nine months with a correlation of 0.84, and two other lines in the same free release lead it by less with fewer false starts. The full lag table, the thresholds we would trade on, and the current readings are below and in the Lead-Time Monitor.