from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
At the present time, products are no longer the only decisive factor when it comes to a company’s success – what is no less crucial is the efficiency of the entire supply chain which allows smooth running of production as well as accurate delivery of products to customers. SCM capabilities are thus of the utmost importance. Following up on our previous industrial supply chain resilience assessment survey (conducted among one hundred key managers of the leading automotive and aerospace enterprises) whose results affirm the significance of the supply chain resilience issues, we now intend to focus on lead time reduction as one of the key factors of supply chain resilience while examining its impact on customer services. Lead time, which is defined as the latency between the placement of an order and item delivery, largely depends on cycle time, a more mechanical measure of process capability measuring the completion rate. One of the strategies to influence lead time is managing cycle time. In our approach we consider cycle time as a business enabler to increase competitiveness on the one hand and the potential for improving supply chain resilience on the other. Our objective is to put together a set of the major tools for minimizing both lead and cycle time and to indicate a measurable impact of their reduction on supply chain resilience in the automotive and aerospace industries.
Keywords: Resilience, Lead Time, Cycle Time, Supply Chain Management, SCM Capabilities© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.