Key Points

• Lead time is the duration between the start and end of a process.
• Cycle time is the duration for the entire process to be completed.
• Understanding how to utilize both time measurements can lead to increases in productivity and efficiency.

Lead time vs. cycle time, which do you choose?

Improving your processes is a nuanced and complicated thing. Understanding the difference between the various measurements of time can only benefit your workflow. So, let’s dive into what this means and how it applies to your production.

What is Lead Time?

Lead time is the duration or latency between when a process is initiated and when it is completed. One example would be if a book is ordered by a publisher to be written and its estimated time until delivery is six months, then six months is the lead time.

The Benefits of Lead Time

Comparing against set standards – When an organization compares its lead time against set standards, the business could find the need to spot any inefficiencies.

Increased productivity – The shortening of lead times can help a business boost its productivity as well as modify its operations.

Competition – Being able to reduce lead time can give an organization a competitive edge.

Cost-saving – Being able to shorten lead times saves costs by cutting down on working capital.

Lower shelf-life items – Items with a lower shelf-life, such as perishables with a sell-by date, need a shorter amount of lead time. Cutting down on lead time helps ensure that these items can sell while they are purchasable.

How to Calculate Lead Time

To calculate lead time, take the order delivery date and subtract from it the order request date.

Lead Time (LT) = order delivery date – order request date

In instances where you are dealing with inventory management, you will include the reordering delay and the supply delay. In instances like this, calculating lead time will look like:

Lead Time (LT) = supply delay (SD) + reordering delay (RD)

In manufacturing, Lead Time refers to the length of time in processing, preparing, manufacturing, and delivering an order. Lead time is calculated by adding the preprocessing, processing, and post-processing time lengths until the delivery of an order.

Lead Time (LT) = preprocessing + processing + postprocessing

What is Cycle Time?

Cycle Time is the actual amount of time that it takes to create a product or work a process.

The Benefits of Cycle Time

Increased profitability – When your organization emphasizes on Cycle Time to control the speed of deliverability, you reduce costs and increase profitability. By knowing how and where time is being spent, you can know where to implement cutbacks.

Production consistency – Having an understanding of Cycle Time gives you a better grasp of your production flow. With this information, you can implement processes that can give a greater assurance of production rates. With the standardization of production rates, there is less chance of over or underproduction.

Happy customers – By being able to properly calculate Cycle Time, you can determine your production rate and give more realistic timelines to your customers. That way, your customers are not getting your product or service later than expected.

Identifying needed process improvements – When reviewing Cycle Time, the opportunity arises to assess and address inefficiencies.

Better project scoping – If you understand the Cycle Time for your team to complete specific tasks, you are better equipped to accurately scope work for your customers.

Outpacing the competition – Calculating your cycle time puts your team at a competitive advantage by using the data to stay ahead of the curve.

Where to put focus – Understanding cycle time can show you what processes should receive the most focus to optimize the use of your resources.
Explain why B is the ideal option to use and in what scenarios.

How to Calculate Cycle Time

Cycle Time is the work time it takes to complete a specific task, without any downtime. Once you take downtime out of production, you have what is called net production time (NPT). To calculate Cycle Time, you are going to divide the net production time by the number of units produced.

Cycle Time = NPT / number of units produced

Lead Time vs. Cycle Time: What’s the Difference?

Lead Time and Cycle Time are related, but they are two separate things. A good way to remember how they are related is that Cycle Time is a component of Lead Time. Lead Time refers to the amount of time between when an order is placed and when it is delivered. Cycle Time refers to only the amount of time when actual work is done to complete an order.

Why Does It Matter?

So, why do these matter? Time is everything, a fundamental measurement in any process or project. Understanding where you can drill down and get times to their idealized states is going to be a net positive for everyone in your organization. As such, understanding what these measurements mean and how they apply is crucial for anyone in a leadership position.

Lead Time vs. Cycle Time: Who would use Lead Time or Cycle Time?

Keeping an eye on both Lead Time and Cycle Time is valuable for your business. Not only are they related, but having a clear grasp of the Cycle Time for the production of a good is a major determining factor in what the Lead Time will be.

Other factors come into play when it comes to Lead Time. Some examples are the ready availability of raw materials and shipping time. Nevertheless, knowing how long it takes to do the work is vital.

When dealing with a customer, it is unlikely that you would ever quote them the Cycle Time for the work. This is information that would generally be internal unless a customer needs a specific breakdown of all aspects related to their Lead Time quote.

Choosing Between Lead Time and Cycle Time: Real-World Scenarios

A company has received an order of 500 units and wants a quote from the customer for when the items can be delivered. The employee taking the order takes into consideration how backed up the supplier is, the delivery time of the raw materials to the manufacturing plant, and orders that are ahead of this one.

The actual Cycle Time to complete 500 units, and the amount of time it will take to deliver the order once completed. After factoring all of that in, the employee gives the customer a Lead Time quote of 30 days.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

While we could all do with a little more time, I hope you’ll take the time to read over some other useful concepts in Six Sigma. For instance, the concept of rolled throughput yield is an important measurement to keep in mind during your production cycle. You can see how to calculate it and how it works in our comprehensive guide.

Additionally, you might want to pay close attention to the voice of the customer. This leading voice is one way to tailor products to your customer’s needs. Learn all about it in a brisk article that we’ve prepared on the subject.

Conclusion

Understanding both Lead Time and Cycle Time is important for your business because they help you have a fuller handle on your operations and processes from the inside out. Being able to use these formulas together puts you in the position of being able to give better estimates to your customers for how long receiving an order will take.

Knowing the Cycle Time tells you how long it takes to do the work minus downtime, and knowing where adjustments can be made to Lead Time can help you trim the fat, make your customers happier, and get more business.