A concise guide to lead time and lead time management

Effective lead time management is a critical factor in securing supply chain efficiency and cost control, since lead time represents the total time required for a product or material to move through the supply chain, as measured from the time of ordering to the time of delivery.
Lead time typically encompasses various supply chain stages, including order processing, manufacturing, transportation, and delivery. It can be scrutinised at a high level, by looking at overall supply chain lead time, or with more granularity by zooming in to elements such as supplier lead time and customer-order lead time.