Policy-making, decision-taking, and control: These are the three functions of management that have intellectual content. - Anthony Stafford Beer

The whole picture is complicated by the stockists and merchants who will try to exploit any shortages that may appear.
The result is this. The feedback information from the industry's environment consists, first and foremost, of a forward order load. Much of this "demand for steel" will be bogus.

There is, then, a logical priority about the arrangements, and logic has nothing to do with time.

A stochastic process is about the results of convolving probabilities-which is just what management is about, as well.