Response time to customers

The selection of the production process and its layout is dictated in part by the volume of product needed and the flexibility needed in the production design. The level of capacity is another basic decision. This will dictate response times to customers and it will determine the volume of product the plant needs to be profitable. A final operating characteristic discussed is the presence of a physical bottleneck in the plant. This bottleneck controls the flow of work through the plant. The relevant issues about bottleneck and constraint management are discussed in greater detail in the next chapter, specifically relating to strategic selection of constraint locations. 

RESPONSE TIME TO CUSTOMERS When selling physical products that cannot be downloaded, customer requests take longer to fulfill through online sales than in a retail store because of the shipping time involved. Thns, cnstomers who require a short response time may not use the Internet to order a product. There is no snch delay, however, for information goods. The Internet has facilitated almost instantaneons access to movies, music, and books in digital form. 

Section 3.9.5 Technical Performance Measurement. Deseribes the approach and methods to identify, establish, and control key technical parameters (limited to those that are eritieal and/or identified by the customer). Descriptions include the thresholds, methods of measuring and traeking, update frequencies, level of tracking depth, and response time to generate recovery plans and planned profile revisions. Described parameters include identification of related risks. Describes the relationship between the selected parameter and lower-level parameters that must be measured to determine the eritieal parameter achievement value, which is depicted in the form of tiered dependency trees and reflects the tie in to the related system performanee requirement (critical parameter). Includes definition of the correlation of each parameter in the dependeney tree to a specific SBS element. 

A second advantage of integrating the customer into the supply chain is that this integrates the product development function with the other functions in the firm. This integration allows the product development staff to communicate more with the customer both internally and externally to the firm, which decreases the firm s response time to the customer s needs and tends to reduce product development time. 

Lead time Total order cycle time occurring from the arrival of a customer order to the receipt of goods or cycle time of the single activities (order transmission, order processing, order composition, order transfer to the production plant, article production, warehouse delivery, final delivery to the customer) Response time, to order tracking requests, etc. 

Response time that customers are wilUng to tolerate The tolerable response time for the emergency order is likely to be short, whereas the allowable response time for the construction order is apt to be long. 

Total logistics costs are the sum of the inventory, transportation, and facility costs. The facilities in a supply chain network should at least equal the number that minimizes total logistics cost. A firm may increase the number of facihties beyond this point to improve the response time to its customers. This decision is justified if the revenue increase from improved response outweighs the increased cost from additional facihties. 

It is important to find out how well the new systems are meeting your customers needs. This data gathering should be carefully designed to provide a genuine opportunity to provide feedback in a constructive fashion. It is likely that your company conducts internal feedback surveys from time to time, you should contact those responsible for these and learn from their experiences. 

In order to perform qualitative and quantitative analysis of the column effluent, a detector is required. Since the column effluent is often very low mass (ng) and is moving at high velocity (50-100 cm/s for capillary columns), the detector must be highly sensitive and have a fast response time. In the development of GC, these requirements meant that detectors were custom-built they are not generally used in other analytical instruments, except for spectroscopic detectors such as mass and infrared spectrometry. The most common detectors are flame ionization, which is sensitive to carbon-containing compounds and thermal conductivity which is universal. Among spectroscopic detectors, mass spectrometry is by far the most common. 

The trouble-shooting manual and customer support services must be available to prevent excessive down time. There should be a 24-h or less response time by the company. 

Step 2 Technical requirements Determine the specific technical requirements for the new method and/or analyzer that will ensure that it captures the previously determined business value. This is also done jointly by the customer and the project manager. Avoid nice to have and focus on what is necessary. Technical requirements may include accuracy, precision, specificity, turnaround time, response time, robusmess, maintenance needs, etc. They should be focused on what the analyzer needs to do (e.g. determine the concentration of component X with 1.5% relative precision, once a minute, in a corrosive process stream at 80 °C), not how it will be done. Issues that need to be considered in setting technical requirements are discussed in Section 15.2.3. 

The company, therefore, has responsibilities, not just to its stakeholders (its owners, its customers, its employees, past and present, and, increasingly these days, to its neighbours), but it also has legal responsibilities, mainly to issue an annual report, containing a set of accounts, especially a balance sheet (for a particular point in time, usually the last day of the financial year for the company) and a profit/ loss account, describing the company s performance during that financial year. 

Performance guarantee audits measure the extent to which the PBM has complied with any performance guarantees included as part of the contract, such as ID card production turnaround time, mail service turnaround time, dispensing accuracy, customer service response time, and member satisfaction. 

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