On-time delivery improvement

Learning objectives

• Define OTD/OTIF with an agreed date, unit and complete/on-time rule.
• Diagnose the systemic causes of late shipments across the order-to-ship path.
• Design gates, buffers and escalation that protect delivery honestly.

Problem and CTQ

Orders miss ex-factory date because milestone data are unreliable or systemic causes go untreated. Never redefine the promise date to make OTD look better.

DMAIC path

• Validate milestone timestamps and reason codes.
• Map the order-to-ship critical path.
• Stratify by buyer, style, material, approval and capacity; analyse lateness distribution.

Improvement choices

• Milestone ownership and material/approval risk gates.
• Finite capacity, frozen window and buffer management.
• Exception escalation and daily critical-path review.

Control plan

• OTD/OTIF, days late, schedule adherence, milestone hit rate, expedite cost, airfreight and backlog aging.

Garment-factory example

A programme runs OTD 74% driven by fabric-in-house misses. A 21-day fabric gate and a weekly critical-path review lift OTD to 92% while airfreight cost falls 46%.

Common mistakes

• Moving promised dates to inflate OTD.
• Counting partial shipments as complete.