Measuring Lead Times with the Matrix
To help our client measure lead times we built what came to be called the Lead Time Matrix.
This simple tool proved to be invaluable in measuring and communicating lead times throughout the organization. The matrix was a spreadsheet that had rows for each of the manufacturing plants and each of the columns was one of the legs in the process from plant to US end customer.
- The legs we choose included
- plant to port
- port to ship
- on the water
- port to dc
- dc to end customer
The real benefit of this approach was that we were able to break down where the unexpected delays were occurring. It turned out that we had a problem with batching at the plant as the shipping department wanted to make sure it had enough product before it created shipments. This resulted in 3-4 days of delay. We fixed this by having the shipping department start operating on a shipping plan based upon the production plan.
The second major problem was the port delays. This was harder to address, but we where able to find about 2 days that were related to our process problems.
If you aren’t measuring lead time then you have too much lead time and excess inventory.
Try to build your own lead time matrix and find out how you can reduce lead times.