Exploration of Opportunities to Reduce Lead Times

Exploration of Opportunities to Reduce Lead Times for Engineered-To-Order Products by Jan Alarik Elfving Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering-Civil and Environmental Engineering University of California, Berkeley Professor Iris D. Tommelein, Chair Scholars and practitioners have long advocated the benefits of reduced lead times. Moreover, most, if not all members of a supply chain would gain from reduced lead times. However, the construction industry has been slow to radically reduce lead times, particularly for Engineered-To-Order (ETO) products. This research applies Transformation-Flow-Value (TFV) theory and lean methods in order to answer the following research question: How can the performance of ETO supply chains be improved? Data were collected from supply chains of power distribution equipment (PDE). The supply chains were described with help of detailed process maps and performance measures. Simulation was applied to gain further understanding of