Operational due diligence is often treated as a pre-close exercise focused on plant condition, capacity, inventory posture, and service performance. In manufacturing and logistics, its real value is usually deeper. The most important signal is often workflow fragmentation: the hidden handoffs, exception loops, approval bottlenecks, and coordination failures that determine whether the business can scale after close. This article explains what operational due diligence actually reveals, why those findings are often wasted in reporting stacks, and how enterprises can use them to build a governed orchestration layer that improves execution across plants, warehouses, suppliers, carriers, and functions.