Concept
The total time from the start of an order or part until it is finished, including all waiting. In most plants, waiting makes up far more of it than actual work.
Lead time, in German Durchlaufzeit, is the full time a part or order needs to move through a process, from start to finish. It includes processing, but also queues, transport, inspection and every other wait. Seen from the customer, lead time can also mean the time from order to delivery.
In many plants, most of the lead time is waiting, not work. That is why lead time is a key figure on a value stream map, shown next to the processing time of each step. Shortening it usually means reducing queues and work in progress, smaller batches and a steadier flow. Little's law, a rule from queueing theory, links the three: work in progress equals throughput times lead time.
| Type | Concept |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Durchlaufzeit, Production lead time, Throughput time, Lieferzeit |
2026-07-25 · Video on YouTube
Engineering dashboards look greener than ever in the age of AI-generated code, yet incidents, review queues and developer burnout keep rising. This episode helps engineering leaders and IT decision makers see through the productivity illusion and shows which…
2026-07-12 · Video on YouTube
Platform Engineering is changing how organizations build and operate Azure environments. Rather than treating cloud infrastructure as a collection of individual projects, Platform Engineering creates a shared internal platform that gives development teams…
2026-10-23
A correct bearing warning is useless if it arrives after the safe maintenance window has passed. This episode walks manufacturing, OT and data teams through everything predictive maintenance on Azure needs before the model, from sensors and edge gateways to…
2026-07-19 · Video on YouTube
CI/CD pipelines are designed to accelerate software delivery, but as organizations grow, speed alone is no longer enough. Without governance, automated pipelines can spread security risks, configuration drift, compliance violations, and inconsistent…
Metrics like deployment frequency or lead time can improve while review queues grow, technical debt rises and code needs constant rewrites, so dashboards show activity rather than system health. · From the episode: The Productivity Illusion
Deployment Frequency, Lead Time, Change Failure Rate and Mean Time To Recovery, which assume humans wrote nearly all production code. · From the episode: The Productivity Illusion
The show notes suggest regularly reviewing key metrics such as deployment frequency and change lead time. These show the impact of platform engineering, which automates approvals by encoding decisions into templates. · From the episode: Platform Engineering
Separating preparation time from repair time lets you judge whether a warning leaves enough lead time to change the plan safely. The repair itself may be short, but getting spares, permits and a production stop agreed can take much longer. · From the episode: Predictive Maintenance on Azure for…
Short info above, community knowledge below: add practical tips, examples or corrections. New contributions are reviewed first; trusted members publish directly.
Maintained by Mirko Peters (Microsoft MVP) · Last updated:
EN
Deutsch
Español
Français
Italiano
Português
Nederlands
Polski
Bahasa Indonesia
Русский
Українська
العربية
עברית
日本語
한국어