Causes for lack of delivery reliability


Quality requirements and competitive sales prices are set by the market and must of course be met. Today's production company can differentiate itself from the competition through its ability to deliver at short notice and high delivery reliability. The degree of delivery reliability is an important evaluation criterion from the customer's point of view. The following points are the main causes for delivery problems.

1. The production planning is not realistically feasible

Production planning is the "brain" and "backbone" of a production company. All departments and groups work to complete their activities just in time according to the plan. If production planning is not realistic from the outset, delivery problems are inevitable. This is typical of a deficient planning system:

  • determination of delivery dates without consideration of finite capacities and capacity utilization
  • no continuous planning for the entire process chain
  • no planning simulation for delivery date determination
  • no consideration of design processes with finite capacities

2. Lack of process synchronisation

In most cases, the main reason for the lack of process synchronization is that the planning tool is unable to create a sequence plan. No sequence planning means that each department, each group, each resource decides its own order priority and production sequence. The consequences are:

  • no process synchronization
  • unpredictability - when which product will be finished
  • delivery date cannot be calculated

3. Lack of process or production control

Without realistic and feasible planning no reasonable production control is possible. Instead, the main task for process control becomes a fire-fighting task. An optimal production control includes:

  • realistic planning
  • short-/mid-/long-term planning simulation
  • early detection of possible delivery problems (days / weeks in advance), in order to take preventive measures in time

This is referred to as a front-loading management system.

4. Lack of transparency on project status (planned / current)

The visualization of the project status is essential, because it is well known that the human brain judges mainly by patterns and images. With a tabular planning (e.g. excel sheet) of hundreds of orders and countless resources with different start and end dates, it is not possible to judge whether a production order is on schedule or not.

Production planning must be presented visually (via GANTT diagrams and graphs):

  • resource capacity and utilization
  • timing of the collective orders for each individual order
  • material fluctuation
  • connection between production timing and material fluctuation
  • current process status vs. plan with regard to deliverability

Only results count

In our Kaizen consulting for just-in-time production to reduce operating costs, we follow the motto "only results count"!

  • KPC analyses your current situation, the problems and their causes.
  • According to the Kaizen philosophy, we create a tailor-made catalogue of measures and an implementation plan for your company, following our motto: "only results count".
  • KPC on-site support
  • The engaged and creative cooperation between our Lean consultants and the client’s team in the successive implementation of measures leads to Lean production with increased productivity and lower operating costs.
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