Why Your Cycle Time Looks Fine on Paper — But Customers Still Complain
You know what I keep hearing from manufacturing leaders?
“Humara cycle time toh theek hai… data sab green hai… but customers are still complaining about delays. Mai kya karu?”
And that gap, between what your data says and what your customer feels, is exactly what we’re going to talk about today.
Welcome to my talk series Kya Karu for business owners like you. I’m Nalin Mehta. Let’s get into it
So what’s actually going on?
Cycle time, as most companies measure it, captures the time from when production starts to when it finishes. That number looks clean. That number looks good.
But your customer doesn’t experience that number.
Your customer experiences the time from when they placed the order to when it arrived at their door. That journey has many more steps in it. And most of those steps are invisible in your current reporting.
Think about what happens before production even starts.
The order comes in. Someone has to enter it. Then it waits for approval. Then it goes to planning. Then planning checks material availability. If something is short, procurement gets involved.
By the time the shop floor actually sees the order, two or three days may have already passed. And none of that shows up in your cycle time report.
Now think about what happens after production ends.
And this is where most companies have a blind spot.
Production declares the order complete. But complete does not mean ready to ship. There is a difference between a product being Produced and a product being Ready for Dispatch.
After production, the product may still need packing. There may be a minor quality correction to be done at final inspection. Some products need post-production testing. In some industries, the product has to go through a run test or a quality check before it can leave the plant.
All of this takes time. And all of this sits between Produced and Ready for Dispatch.
Then, after Ready for Dispatch, there are more steps. Has the customer been informed that the order is ready? If the customer needs to send a representative for inspection, have they been intimated in advance, with enough lead time? Has the customer’s payment status been checked by finance? Is the vehicle arranged?
Each of these steps takes time. And none of it shows up in your cycle time.
So what’s the fix?
Stop measuring cycle time. Start measuring customer lead time.
Customer lead time is the full journey. Order received to order delivered. Every single hour counted. Every single step included.
Once you start measuring this, you will immediately see where the real delays are hiding.
Build a dashboard that shows two numbers: Produced and Ready for Dispatch.
This is a simple but powerful change.
Every day, your dashboard should show how many units are produced and how many are actually ready for dispatch. The gap between these two numbers is where your delays are hiding.
Once you can see that gap, you can start asking the right questions. What is holding up the Ready for Dispatch status? Is it packing? Quality? Testing? Documentation? Customer intimation?
Each of those is a fixable problem. But only once you can see it.
Map every handoff in the order journey.
Take one recent order and trace it hour by hour. When did it come in? When was it entered? When did planning pick it up? When did production start? When did it finish? When was Ready for Dispatch status confirmed? When was the customer informed? When was the vehicle arranged? When did it reach the customer?
Most leadership teams are shocked when they do this for the first time. The production step is often the fastest part. The waiting steps around it are where the time is going.
Put a time target on every step, not just production.
Once you know the steps, set a maximum time for each one.
Order entry within two hours. Planning review within four hours. Ready for Dispatch within a fixed window after production. Customer intimation before the order is even complete, so there is no waiting on their side. Dispatch within twelve hours of Ready for Dispatch confirmation.
When every step has an owner and a time target, delays stop hiding.
Your cycle time data is not wrong. It is just incomplete.
The moment you start looking at the full customer journey, including everything that happens before production and everything that happens after, you will find the gaps.
And once you find them, fixing them is straightforward.
Measure the right thing. Then act on what you see.
I hope this was useful. Stay connected, there’s a lot more coming in this series.
