To Deliver on Time - Focus UpFront
I follow author and consultant Giles Johnston. He wrote a recent blog post that I would like to share. If we ignore the sales pitch for the author's book, this article hits the nail on the head. The analogy might be a sprint - you need to get out of the starting blocks well in order to perform well. Focus on customer delivery in the last phases of production/shipping is too late. I once managed an improvement event focused on the process from order entry to the delivery of engineering data to support the planning process in an ETO environment. We found ways to cut weeks out of the upfront process that could then be used for supply lead times and production. Saving time up front gives you time to get aligned for performance down the line. Read the post