Delivery Performance -- Case Study
On-Time Delivery Transformed: 62% to 96% in One Year
+34 Percentage Points
Chronic delivery failures had become the defining characteristic of this operation in its customers' eyes. At 62% on-time delivery, more than one in three shipments was late -- triggering costly expediting, damaging customer relationships, and consuming management time in constant escalation cycles rather than improvement work.
The problem had existed long enough that it had been normalized. "We are a make-to-order operation" and "our customers have unpredictable demand" had become the accepted explanations. A structured root cause investigation told a very different story.
A structured 8D investigation was launched alongside a full value stream map of the order-to-ship process. The VSM revealed three primary root causes that accounted for the majority of late shipments.
Production schedules were being built weekly but modified multiple times per day in response to expedite requests, with no formal prioritization criteria. The result was a constantly shifting schedule that operators could not rely on and supervisors could not enforce.
When a delivery was at risk, it was unclear who owned the resolution. Customer service, production, and shipping each had partial visibility but no single owner of the delivery commitment. Problems were identified late and escalated slowly.
A subset of key components had inconsistent supplier lead times that were not reflected in the production schedule. When components arrived late, the schedule had no buffer and no response protocol.
"The delivery problem was not a capacity problem. It was a visibility, accountability, and discipline problem. Once we could see it clearly, fixing it was straightforward."
Implemented a frozen schedule window -- the production sequence for the next 48 hours could not be changed without supervisor approval and documentation of the business reason. Schedule adherence became a tracked daily metric visible to all.
Established a three-tier daily meeting cadence: a 10-minute floor huddle at shift start, a 20-minute cross-functional meeting at mid-morning identifying at-risk orders, and a daily end-of-day review of next-day readiness. Each meeting had a clear owner and escalation path.
Installed physical delivery status boards at each production cell showing the day's order commitments and current status. Visibility changed behavior -- nobody wanted their name next to a red status on the floor board.
Built a weekly supplier scorecard tracking on-time delivery by component and supplier. For the three suppliers responsible for the most schedule disruptions, initiated formal corrective action requests and established safety stock buffers.
-- Scott Hacker, MBA | Quality and CI Manager | Kansas City, MO