The Importance of Managing Lead Times
From McDonalds to Starbucks, no one likes to wait - and if you’re an importer you know that waiting for product s to reach your destination can not only hurt your business, it can end it. Long waits can prevent fulfilling orders on time, and can be damaging to a company’s reputation. So, fulfilling orders on time is one of the most important ways to increase customer satisfaction- and the faster the turnaround time to ship an order, the more confidence placed with a supplier. So, just how do you ensure that your lead times are satisfactory so that you can fulfill customer orders on time in your company. Below are some pointers and areas that can help you better understand how lead time can be proactively managed.
Lead Time, defined is the amount of time it takes to process an order and ship a product.
Reducing lead time can:
▪ Assist you in taking the initiative and gaining flexibility in a sequential and ever-changing market.
▪ Faster and effective output helps you outperform your competitors.
▪ Avoid missed orders and lost customers due to stock shortages through fast and timely replenishment.
▪ Order fulfillment has become more efficient, and cash flow has increased.
Now that we understand the benefits of reducing lead times, what can you do to reduce lead times?
1. Strategically Plan your Orders
Most businesses are seasonal and therefore it is beneficial to plan inventory needs that anticipate customer demand, and with that consider the seasonal impact of your customer buying patterns. This can obviously be performed by looking at past inventory, sales, and unit movement from prior years. New products can be estimated to increase as well during these seasonal impacts. Other things to take into consideration would be items that you might want to promote or specially price during the coming months. Planning needs well in advance will add sales and profits along with happy customers for your business.
2. Consolidating Orders
Having multiple shipments from multiple sources entering the supply chain can be very expensive. When you have 2 or more suppliers located in the same geographic area it can make sense to combine the products to optimize container fill rates and shipping fees.
In fact, LUMI can also act as your agent and work with other suppliers that you have in China. We can perform production quality control, negotiate best costs, and ensure your deliveries are followed and on time too. Today’s resellers need to ensure they are getting the absolute best quality at the lowest prices. LUMI can help you reach those. 
3. Communication is the Key to Success
Whether you are a current LUMI customer or looking for a new supplier, you should know that we pride ourselves on our ability to communicate efficiently and clearly when it comes to issues that impact lead time. In the past few years, we’ve experienced a roller-coaster of issues that impact lead times, from rolling brown-outs to congested ports and limited container availability. As these things occurred, LUMI’s professional business development managers and our experienced logistics specialists worked together to jump these hurdles in order to reduce production and delivery lead time for our customers.
In summary, managing lead times will help your business remain stable, competitive, and dependable for your customers. We hope you will consider working with LUMI to help build your business on a stable and firm foundation. Contact LUMI should you have any questions, comments, or suggestions – we’re always here for you at info@lumi.cn
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Picture Sources:
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