An Experimental Investigation of Lead Time and the Effect of Order Crossover

摘要

This paper presents results from an experimental investigation of lead time distributions. The focus is on the order crossover phenomenon where slower orders are overtaken by faster orders and the impact of this on the structure of the observed lead time distribution. The natural conclusion is that the likelihood of order crossover occurring strongly depends on the skewness and variance of the lead time distribution. Furthermore, the conclusion is that while lead times may be i.i.d. random variables, when crossover occurs lead times observed in the sequence orders are received are in fact mutually dependent. This has a significant impact on how supply chain members should estimate lead times and lead time distributions. That lead times are in fact mutually dependent is a major finding and has implications for both practice and academia.