On time delivery (OTD), sometimes referred to as on-time completion, varies based on the company’s approach to tracking these metrics. In the wake of COVID-19, the focus on on-time delivery has diminished somewhat due to disruptions in shipping and logistics. As a result, many businesses are redefining this concept to emphasize not just timely delivery, but also the evidence that shipments were sent according to the requested, contracted, or best available means.
One significant challenge is that dates often shift. For instance, a design change can cause delays on both your end and the customer’s. If these new dates aren’t updated in your ERP system, it becomes difficult to determine whether a project was completed on time. Frequently, companies believe their on-time delivery performance is better than it is because their ERP doesn’t adequately track the necessary information. Moreover, manipulating dates in the system can lead to misleading assessments of completion times, as employees may adjust dates to present the best possible outcomes. This practice results in poor data, which can hinder business performance.
So, how can you effectively track on-time delivery without consuming excessive resources? The solution is straightforward. Schedule a meeting with your sales and production teams—include your team leads as necessary—and hold these sessions at least once a month. During these meetings, review all the projects completed or shipped in the prior month and score them based on their on-time delivery performance.
Scoring System for On-Time Delivery
- Score of 0: This score is for tracking jobs that are not applicable. Examples include internal inventory projects, placeholders for costs, or duplicates entered into the system. These projects don’t affect on-time delivery.
- Score of 1: A score of one indicates that the project was completed within the contracted time frame. For instance, if you estimated a timeline of 3 to 6 weeks and completed the work in 4 weeks, you’d score it a one.
- Score of 2: This score reflects situations where you missed the contracted date but still maintained customer satisfaction. For example, if the initial estimate was 3 to 6 weeks but took 8 weeks to complete, this might be acceptable if the customer was informed about the delay and understood the reasons behind it.
- Score of 3: A score of three indicates that you missed the deadline with potential negative impacts on customer satisfaction. This could happen if you had an overload of work and were late by a few days. While understandable, it’s essential to track this to identify areas for improvement. If your organization has more than 2% of projects scoring threes, it’s time for corrective action.
- Score of 4: A score of four signifies a failure to meet customer expectations, often resulting in dissatisfaction. This could mean the customer is unhappy with the delay, which may jeopardize future business opportunities. Any project scoring a four should be immediately considered for corrective action.
Keep it Simple
Tracking on-time delivery isn’t overly complex. A simple Excel spreadsheet can suffice—list your projects in the left-hand column, note delivery times in the right, and consider adding a comments column for additional context. By meeting monthly to review and update this information, you can effectively monitor your performance. Ideally, this metric should be a key performance indicator (KPI) for both your sales and production teams, and it can serve as a valuable quality objective for your organization.
Integrating On-Time Delivery Tracking with TQA Cloud
Integrating on-time delivery tracking with TQA Cloud is straightforward and highly effective. For every score of three, we issue a Non-Conformance Report (NCR) within TQA Cloud, using a defect code specifically for on-time delivery. Your Tier 1 defect code would be OTD (On-Time Delivery), and Tier 2 codes allow you to track specific causes for late delivery. Common causes for these delays often include scheduling conflicts, resource shortages, unforeseen production issues, supply chain disruptions, or last-minute design changes.
For scores of 4, we use a dedicated Tier 1 defect code, OTD4. Since OTD4 represents a critical issue affecting customer satisfaction, we aim to minimize or entirely eliminate these occurrences. Managing these reports is simple within TQA Cloud—just run a standard or premium report to count NCRs for OTD or OTD4 and compare them to your total orders within the same period using data from your ERP. Depending on your ERP, we can even develop a Power BI report to automate this comparison, helping you stay on top of on-time delivery performance. Contact us to learn how we can support your team in setting this up. (512) 845-9001 | info@texasqa.com
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