Inventory operations
Lead time
Order placed to stock saleable, as observed.
Where it lives in nouz
Products, on the variant, feeding cover and reorder alerts.
Lead time is the interval between placing a purchase order and the stock being saleable: production, freight, customs, inspection and putaway, all of it. The observed figure is the one that matters, because it is the interval your stock actually has to survive rather than the one a contract promised.
It is the input every stock decision multiplies. Cover, reorder points and safety stock all scale with it, so an extra fortnight of lead time raises the stock a store must hold and the cash tied up in it, which is a real cost of choosing a cheaper distant supplier.
Measure it door to shelf. A supplier who ships in thirty days into a port that takes ten and a warehouse that takes three has a 43-day lead time, and the three days at the end are the ones everybody forgets and the ones most easily fixed.
Its variability matters as much as its length. A reliable 45 days needs far less safety cover than an unpredictable range of 30 to 60, and the honest way to size that cushion is from how late the last several orders actually were.
Related terms