ABSTRACT
Presentation to the market on a timely basis is the greatest opportunity for competitive advantage available to the manufacturing industries in the modern world. Be able to satisfy the market demand NOW, assuming you have good quality and competitive pricing, and you are likely to have all the business you can handle. This means that you must operate under a system that allows very short production cycle times so that your lead time to the customer is significantly better than that of the competition. Lead time is defined as the number of days (or hours) you can quote to your customer for delivery of a product or production order. Lead time is the total production cycle, which includes all the work-in-process currently in the system; the raw material purchase cycle; and any order backlog position that exists at that time. If it is ordered today, without pulling this order around any that are now in the pipeline, how long will it take to get it delivered to the customer?
