Mill order acknowledgments read against your purchase order, line by line, while your buyer can still object.

A mill acknowledgment rarely mirrors the PO it answers. It arrives as a PDF, a portal page or an EDI printout, written in the mill's item terms, and it may split one PO line into several items or fold several lines into one. Your buyer matches each item back to the PO, checks the specification and the numbers, and calls or writes the mill about anything that changed.

For the test, AI reads copies of those acknowledgments with the POs behind them and drafts a difference list for each one: the PO line, the field, what the PO says, what the mill says, and the rule from your own records that applies. Lines that agree are marked as agreeing. Nothing is accepted, rejected or answered; the list goes to your reviewer.

Silence can count as a yes. Cleveland-Cliffs' terms of sale, effective July 1, 2025, presume the buyer accepts the mill's terms once it receives the order acknowledgment and sends no written objection within ten days. They also make the price on the acknowledgment the purchase price, and bar changing or cancelling a PO the mill has received without its written consent. An acknowledgment left unread in a buyer's inbox is not neutral, so the draft puts the date each one arrived at the top of its list, and your buyer applies each mill's own window.

Which date sets the price. Cliffs' Products and Prices book, effective January 1, 2026, prices orders at the figures in effect at the time of acknowledgment, and its terms apply an announced surcharge to product scheduled to ship from the date in the announcement. Extras ride on each line: the packaging extra follows the order item weight unless the buyer names a smaller package, standard packages of 15,000 pounds and over carry none, and a test report counts as an extra where the specification calls for one. The draft sets the acknowledged base, each extra and any surcharge beside your PO, with the date each one depends on. It never says a price is right.

Coil weights follow the mill's book, not your PO. Cliffs takes quantities only in multiples of the maximum coil weight, refuses orders for a minimum or exact coil weight, and ships lightweight coils from production on items up to 100 tons; on items of 200,000 pounds and over, the order is complete once the open balance falls under 30,000 pounds. Its ordered maximum PIW has to suit both the quantity and the mode of transportation, and its standard hot-rolled coil comes on a 30-inch ID. A buy sized for your slitter can come back rounded to coils or on another ID. Each goes on the list, even when the mill is following its own rules.

Grade, revision and surface. Cliffs' mills work to the latest agreed revision of a specification, and some grades come in heat or tundish lot quantities that vary by plant. Its light flat-rolled claims policy, dated January 2026, weighs claims against the final order acknowledgment, and supplies a coil's top side as the prime surface unless the order asked otherwise and the acknowledgment accepted it. So a PO for two exposed sides, answered by an acknowledgment silent on surface, is a line to raise now. The draft compares grade, specification and revision, size, tolerance notes and surface word for word, and leaves every judgment about the metal to your quality people.

A rolling week is a plan. Nucor's guide to its beam mill rolling schedules says they are updated every Friday, with codes that include open, closed, inquire and subject to accumulation, a rolling that may be skipped if orders fall short, and it puts a typical roll cycle at six to seven weeks. Cliffs' terms guarantee no delivery date and ship F.O.B. the shipping point unless the acknowledgment says otherwise. The draft sets the acknowledged week beside the date on your PO and on any customer order behind it, with the freight terms. Your reviewer, usually the purchasing manager, checks every difference found, every one missed and every false match.

If your reviewer says yes against the success criteria, the same check runs on incoming acknowledgments for about 30 days.

A buyer reads every list and decides each difference: accept it, call the mill, or leave it. Replies to mills and any change to a PO stay with your purchasing team.

Any next job is chosen on its own and priced on its own.