Lead times, and the calendar that governs them

Lead times are quoted with confidence and delivered with variability, and buyers often read that as unreliability. Usually it is not. It is a calendar that the buyer could not see.

What a lead time is actually made of

Component availability, line time and finishing. Components include the things a workshop buys in: fabric, foam, hardware, mechanisms, glass. Any of those can be the constraint, and the workshop does not control them.

Then there is line time, which is the queue. Your order joins other orders. And finishing, which is often the real bottleneck because a finishing line can only process so much and lacquer needs time to cure whatever anybody wants.

The two dates that govern the year

Chinese New Year. The single most important thing on the calendar. Production pauses around it and does not resume at full speed immediately afterwards. The weeks before are extremely busy as everyone tries to finish, and the weeks after run slower while staffing returns to normal. An order placed close to it needs genuine contingency built in, not optimism.

Fair season. In the run up to the major fairs, workshops are producing new collection samples alongside their normal orders. Capacity tightens, and lead times quoted in those weeks are under more pressure than at other times of year.

Neither is a reason to avoid ordering. Both are reasons to ask a direct question: what is the lead time for an order placed in this specific month.

The mixed order problem

If your container holds goods from five suppliers, your lead time is the longest of the five plus whatever slippage occurs. Buyers commonly agree five lead times independently and are then surprised by the arithmetic.

Fixing it is simple. Collect all the lead times before ordering anything. Place the long ones first. Place the short ones later so everything converges on the same week. It costs nothing and it is the single most effective scheduling move available.

Questions that get you a real number

What is the lead time from deposit, and what exactly starts the clock. Is every material in stock, or is anything being ordered in. What is on your line ahead of this order. What is the lead time if I place it in a quieter month. What would you tell me if this were running two weeks late.

That last question is unusual and revealing. A supplier who answers it comfortably is a supplier who intends to tell you when there is a problem, which is worth more than a shorter quoted lead time.

Building in contingency

Add time. Not because anyone is unreliable, but because a chain with five suppliers, one warehouse, a port and a shipping line has many places to lose a week. Buyers who plan to receive goods exactly when they need them are the ones who end up paying for air freight.

Where being on the ground helps

Lead times drift quietly. A workshop that is two weeks behind rarely announces it, not out of bad faith but because they expect to catch up and usually do. The difference between finding out at week four and finding out at week eight is the difference between adjusting your plan and explaining a delay to your customer.

Someone local who can walk in and ask how it is going, once, halfway through the run, catches that. It is an unglamorous piece of work and it is the one that most often protects a delivery date.