What happened to the 100% on-time delivery requirement?

[Bill Pflanz]

"On Time" delivery is a classic problem especially when it is not defined. This is one reason I beleive it was dropped from TS 16949. It really is not meaningful since we can define "on time" in many, many ways. Work on this issue first before even considering whether some text on a PO is useful.Regards, Dirk

You are right Dirk. When I was in the Chemical Industry we started to track on-time delivery and encountered similiar problems. In Chemicals, what controls the delivery time is the tank inventory. If it is full then a delivery is too early, if it is empty then you shut down the customer's plant and it is late.

Operations wants a delivery that minimizes production problems. Accountants may want a delivery time that minimizes inventory costs. Purchasing may want to control inventory by best price. When a customer asks for on time delivery make sure you have them define the meaning and the tolerances. A specification could be delivery within 24 hours with a tolerance of + or - one hour with delivery defined as product off loaded at the receiving gate.

Even if you agree to all of the delivery requirements, you better have a robust system for tracking all the unique customer requirements for delivery. In addition, you will need to get someone to record the actual delivery time at your customer site. Will the customer record it, the trucking company or rail road or do you deliver the product using your own transportation and drivers?

My experience has been that companies can find an extraordinary number of ways to cause customer problems between the time it leaves your gate and the time it reaches the customer.

Bill Pflanz

 

[Karen R]

Operations wants a delivery that minimizes production problems. Accountants may want a delivery time that minimizes inventory costs. Purchasing may want to control inventory by best price. When a customer asks for on time delivery make sure you have them define the meaning and the tolerances. A specification could be delivery within 24 hours with a tolerance of + or - one hour with delivery defined as product off loaded at the receiving gate.

Even if you agree to all of the delivery requirements, you better have a robust system for tracking all the unique customer requirements for delivery. In addition, you will need to get someone to record the actual delivery time at your customer site. Will the customer record it, the trucking company or rail road or do you deliver the product using your own transportation and drivers?

Great points - assuming we're talking about suppliers delivering to us (my original question, but both points are valid), any "simple" ideas on how you set about defining and tracking these variables? When we managed this on a facility level, with one purchasing manager, it was easy - that person put the due dates in the system, scheduled the deliveries and if a need changed, changed the due date. If we had an issue with the delivery time, that same person contacted the vendor for resolution.

But now we're talking a corporate scale with centralized purchasing... and an entirely new system we haven't even used yet. Any ideas how we can manage on a small scale for now as work on defining the global system?

 

[Bill Pflanz]

When we managed this on a facility level, with one purchasing manager, it was easy - that person put the due dates in the system, scheduled the deliveries and if a need changed, changed the due date. If we had an issue with the delivery time, that same person contacted the vendor for resolution.

But now we're talking a corporate scale with centralized purchasing... and an entirely new system we haven't even used yet. Any ideas how we can manage on a small scale for now as work on defining the global system?

Karen,

I should have paid more attention (sorry) to your original post but my comments do show the view from the other side. Reviewing your process again, your Purchasing department is tracking promised delivery time so you do have a method based on due date when it must be delivered or it is late. You say nothing about early.

The larger question is what does your company gain by on-time delivery. Do you give better customer service, help production meet schedules, or some other value added purpose? Before you said up a sophisticated or even an expensive tracking system, you may want to consider how it effects your overall quality goals.

I hope your requirements like delivery time are not boiler plate comments that are printed in very small, faint type on the back of a PO that no one ever reads. Your current experience with on time delivery may be coincidental more than a result of your requirement.

Bill Pflanz

 

[Graeme]

Heard on the radio

This is possibly off-topic, but -

Heard on the radio this morning: the Ford assembly plant near Atlanta is shut down this morning (at least) because some critical items were not delivered in time.

On-time may mean one thing if you have some inventory to pull from. It means something else entirely if your production process works on just-in-time delivery! Which is more expensive - maintaining enough inventory to work for a day or two, or idling a plant for a while?

GCP