A few years ago, I was advising a mid-sized electronics manufacturer struggling to deliver on customer commitments. Its end-to-end lead time was 32 days, but what mattered wasn’t just the number.

Watermark Living announced a major reduction in the lead time for receipt of custom ordered casual furnishings. The current three-week turnaround from order to shipment is a reduction from the ...

This column will introduce a lead-time metric that has seen 20 years of successful application in industry and fits-to-a-T what is needed for Next Generation Lean. This inclusion of suppliers and ...