Glossary

OTD (On-time Delivery)

OTD commonly refers to the percentage of orders, jobs, or shipments delivered by their committed due date.

Planning, Procurement and Resilience Performance Visibility (OEE, NPT, Shift Variance)Supplier Scorecards and OTD

OTD (On-time Delivery) commonly refers to a performance measure showing how often a supplier, production operation, or logistics process delivers an order, job, or shipment on or before its committed due date. It is typically expressed as a percentage over a defined period.

In manufacturing and supply chain operations, OTD is used to track schedule reliability rather than product quality, cost, or overall throughput. It applies to internal production orders, customer shipments, supplier deliveries, repair turnarounds, and other commitment-based workflows where a promised delivery date exists.

How it is used in operations

OTD is commonly monitored in ERP, MES, planning, shipping, and supplier management processes. For example, a manufacturer may track whether finished goods shipped to the customer by the requested date, or whether a supplier delivered material in time to support a work order release.

The exact calculation can vary by organization. Common variations include whether early deliveries count as on time, whether partial shipments qualify, which date field is authoritative, and whether the metric is based on lines, orders, quantities, or value. Because of this, OTD should be interpreted together with the local business rule used to calculate it.

What OTD includes and excludes

Includes delivery performance against a defined commitment date.
May include customer orders, purchase orders, production jobs, service events, or repair completions.
Does not by itself measure conformance, yield, cost, or completeness unless those are explicitly built into the metric definition.
Does not explain why a delivery was late. Root causes may come from planning, shortages, capacity constraints, rework, logistics, or data issues.

Common confusion

OTD is often confused with OTP (On-time Performance), OTR (On-time Release), and OEE. These are not the same. OTD focuses on meeting a delivery commitment. OEE measures equipment effectiveness. A process can have high OEE and still miss OTD if planning, materials, quality holds, or downstream constraints delay shipment.

OTD is also sometimes confused with OTIF (On Time In Full). OTIF is narrower and usually requires both timeliness and complete fulfillment. OTD may count a delivery as on time even when the shipment is partial, depending on the local definition.

Manufacturing example

If a supplier is expected to deliver machined parts by Friday and the shipment arrives Friday under the agreed rule, that order may count as on time for OTD. If it arrives Monday, it would typically count as late, even if the parts meet all quality requirements.

There is no single universal minimum. In practice, about 25 to 30 rational subgroup averages, or roughly 100 to 125 individual observations, is a common starting point for a preliminary capability study. More data is usually needed when the process is unstable, mixed across setups or lots, measured poorly, or run at low volume.

How many KPI categories should a manufacturing organization define?

There is no fixed correct number. Most manufacturing organizations should limit KPI categories to a small, governed set, often about 4 to 8, so reporting stays usable and ownership stays clear. The right count depends on operating model, data quality, regulatory traceability needs, and how well metrics can be maintained across MES, ERP, QMS, and legacy systems.

Why is standardized KPI terminology important for multi-site aerospace manufacturers?

Standardized KPI terminology lets multi-site aerospace manufacturers compare performance accurately, avoid false conclusions, and maintain audit-ready traceability. Without clear, shared definitions for metrics like OEE, NPT, and COPQ, plants optimize against different scoreboards, masking risk, hiding capacity constraints, and undermining quality and compliance initiatives.

What information should be visible in real time to aerospace production supervisors?

Aerospace production supervisors need real‑time visibility to work status, constraints, quality risk, and compliance exposure, not just high‑level dashboards. In brownfield plants this usually means layering focused execution views over ERP/MES data, with careful attention to data trust, configuration, and validation before using any view for decision making.

Related Glossary

cross-site benchmarking

Cross-site benchmarking compares performance, process, or quality measures across sites using a common basis.