Lead Time Reduction of Laboratory Testing Services

Abstract

Services, more specifically laboratory testing services, that await arrival of customer inputs prior to commencing suffer from long lead times. Can performing the steps in a group of services concurrently with the transportation lead time of customer input reduce service lead times? This research clustered services according to their co-occurrence frequency. Then it developed a model to perform as many steps in those services as possible prior to customer input arriving. The model triggered performance of those actions by a customer message at the time of inputting the shipment. The results showed the model is effective only when groups of services ordered on single inputs can be performed concurrently with the transportation lead time. Lead time reduction is not effective when multiple services are ordered but only some are performed in advance. In conclusion, a one-to-many relationship between customer input and ordered services requires process step concurrency between all services and input transit time to effectively reduce lead times. Additionally, customer communication can give service providers a window of time to perform services just-in-time.