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Some customers will wait for their product and some will not. Depending on the requirements of the customer, an organization must plan to be responsive enough to meet these or lose the business. Responsiveness (sometimes called delivery time) depends on a variety of things, and most importantly by the balance of demand and supply.
If demand is drastically higher than the production capacity, the only ways that responsiveness can be made reasonable is by getting extra capacity (either by direct investment in capacity expansion, by subcontracting, or by increasing factory efficiency), or employing demand management strategies such as raising the product price.
If demand and capacity are approximately matched, then responsiveness can be improved by improving raw material supply and increasing finished goods stock, and/or by reducing the production lead time.
The delivery index curve (see below) is designed to reflect the customers' perception of the delivery of the product given the average delivery time. Different market segments expect different levels of delivery. To find the segment differences, See:
Reports ---> Scenario Information ---> Market Segment Scenario Information ---> Product Dimension Preferences
from the reports menu in the single or multi-player.
