Shorten Your Business Lead Times and Win More Business, Just Don’t Drop the Baton!

One of the common searches on the Internet is for ‘lead time reduction’. A staple in most business’ list of aims and objectives, this focus can bring great rewards when achieved, most notably from winning more business from satisfied customers. The route people take to achieve lead time reduction, however, could often be much more straight forward, if only they would take time to ensure that their improvement activities focus on areas of their business that yield the biggest benefits for the least amount of activity / effort.

A lot of attention is paid to the individual processes within a business, but the interactions between functions and departments can often yield far greater results. For a long time now the work that people have been involved with has been scrutinised and evaluated to the point that most businesses have individual processes that are fairly slick. Computer programs and better tools to do the job have allowed individuals to become far more productive than they have ever been before. As their productivity has increased so has the complexity of the work that has been won by the business. This newfound multiplication of variety and dependence on others to get the job done has extended the lead time of a business’ processes.

In the title of this article I refer to ‘dropping the baton’, and a relay race is a great example of what I am talking about. When you have a team of fast sprinters, all with the objective of winning the gold medal as a team, it does not matter how fast they are individually if the team is unable to execute slick hand overs. I see the same situation arise in many businesses. They are technically excellent at what they do, processes have been clearly defined and they still don’t perform when it counts. When you look at the overall picture it is the interfaces between the stages, between the departments, between the functions where the lead time is expanding. The baton has been dropped.

An example that is vivid in my mind goes back to my Operations Management days. The lead time through our manufacturing plant was growing and getting towards twenty weeks. This was accepted within our industry as batch sizes of production were dropping and variety was increasing. What was actually increasing was the confusion within the businesses operating in that sector. If you mapped out the process it only really needed two and a half weeks from material release to shipping. By working with the teams and working one handover at a time we found better ways to share information and to work together. After three months our lead time for production had shortened to less than four weeks. Still some way to go at that point to our view of perfection, but the major reduction in lead time was from simplifying how work was passed from one part of the business to another.

If you are looking to reduce the lead times for products and projects through your business then consider looking at the hand overs that take place within it. You can spend a great deal of time working on complicated process maps and team events, but if you are short of time and need to do something to quickly improve how your business works then remember the relay race and find ways to avoid dropping the baton.