Lead time, notably in manufacturing, is the amount of time needed to execute a process from beginning to end. It comprises the amount of time needed to get supplies, produce things, and transport completed goods. Lead times may be affected by a scarcity of raw materials, transportation problems, and a labor shortage. By using just-in-time and automated stock replenishment techniques, businesses may reduce lead times. However, because lead times differ amongst supply chain sources, it is challenging to plan production and estimate delivery dates. This may lead to surplus inventory, straining a business's finances. A business must carefully organize every operation, including manufacturing orders, delivery, and receptions, to successfully provide exceptional customer service. For each phase, Odoo sets commitment dates, giving buyers an idea of when they may expect to get their purchases. All additional lead times, such as those for production, shipping, or suppliers, are considered by these dates. Customers can better understand when their orders will arrive because different lead times for each procedure are specified.
Odoo 17 offers various lead-time settings to set expected times for receiving, delivering, or manufacturing products and plan operations such as,
* Customer Lead Time is a set length of time for a product to be shipped to the customer, not a calculated field. It is used to calculate expected sales orders but should not include actual shipping time due to unpredictable shipping variables.
* Sales Security Lead Time is a pre-configured time padding that allows for delays in the process, calculated by subtracting the Customer Lead Time from the Scheduled Date for a Delivery Order once confirmed.
* Vendor Lead Time is the time required by a vendor to deliver a subpart or product to the customer, set at the product level, allowing for consideration of delivery times when ordering multiple vendors.
* Security Lead Time for Purchase provides additional time to mitigate vendor delays, especially for new or inconsistent vendors. Enabling this ensures a single cushion for all vendors but may cause confusion in PO Order Dates.
* Manufacturing Lead Time is the anticipated time it takes to produce a product without considering quantity or routing time.
* Manufacturing Security Lead Time is a single setting for all manufacturing orders, providing additional time to mitigate manufacturing delays, especially for large volume orders or maintenance or procedural delays.
* Reordering Rules Lead Time is a product-level setting that allows for additional time for sending orders to suppliers or processing items ordered. It's separate from Vendor Lead Times and can be set at zero or used in conjunction with other times.
In this article, You will get an explanation of the Delivery Lead time and Security Lead Time functionalities available in the Odoo 17 Sales Module.
Configuring Delivery Lead Time
In Odoo 17, you can configure the product delivery time very easily. And also setting different Delivery Times for Different Vendors is also possible. Setting up this delivery time helps customers to understand better when their orders will arrive. To check how to configure this feature, we can create a new product using the “Product” window available in the “Products” menu of the Odoo 17 Sales Module.
Now, Let’s create a new product from the “New” button placed at the top of the dashboard.
You can fill out the required product data inside the displayed form view. After entering the “Product Name,” you can specify what can be done with the product by choosing the “Can be Sold,” “Can be Purchased,” “Can be Expensed,” “Can be Rented,” and “Recurring” options.
Setting Delivery Lead Time for Vendors
After editing the required fields, Click the “Purchase” tab to set the delivery Lead Time.
To set the vendor's name, price, currency, and delivery lead time, click the "Add a line" button located under the "Purchase" tab. You only need to choose the vendor name, price, and currency. The delivery time may thus be easily defined under the "Delivery Lead Time" field. Additionally, it is possible to set various Delivery Lead Times for various Vendors. This delivery lead time will be the expected arrival date of the product when the consumer puts in an order, and you may add several entries using the same procedure.
Customer Lead Time
The administrative users can also set a lead time for the customers from the “Inventory” tab of the Product configuration form.
You can just provide the number of days in the “Customer Lead Time” field to make it the Lead time for the customers. We have provided the Customer Lead Time as “3,” so the order date will be three days earlier than the scheduled date when the customer places a purchase order or quotation. To check this, we can create a sales order using the above product.
Creating a Sales Quotation
You can create a Quotation using the “Quotations” option available in the “Orders” menu.
Fill out the required details of the Quotation, including the “Customer,” Invoice Address,” “Delivery Address,” “Quotation Template,” Recurring Plan,” “ Pricelist,” “Payment Terms,” etc., Then add your products and other details inside the “Order Lines,” “Other Info,” and “Notes’ tab sections and save the Quotation details. You can see the ordered date of the quotation inside the “Order date” field, as illustrated in the above screenshot.
The “Delivery Date” file inside the “DELIVERY’ section of the “Other Info” tab will show the expected delivery date of the product, as depicted in the screenshot below.
You can see that the delivery date, which is also the customer lead time that we previously defined, is three days later than the actual requested or ordered date.
Configuring Security Lead Time
Security Lead Time is the Sales module's Lead Time for Sales parameter, which adds days to the anticipated delivery date to compensate for unexpected delays and guarantee that the consumer receives their order on time.
You can configure the security lead times for the sales process from the Odoo 17 Inventory Module. So, go to the “Settings” window from the “Configuration” menu as shown below.
Just enter the move-forward days inside the space given under the “Security Lead Time for Sales” field and save the details.
Creating a Quotation and checking the Security Lead time
Here, I have created a new quotation using the previously created product named “Laptop Stand” and just saved all the required form data and confirmed the Quotation order using the “Confirm” button.
After confirming the order, you will receive a “Delivery” smart button at the top of the configuration form, as shown below.
We can check the delivery details of the quotation within the delivery section of the product after opening the “Delivery” button.
As you can see in the "Scheduled Date" section, the security lead time of 2 days that we previously defined has been applied to the estimated delivery time. So the delivery is scheduled 2 days before the delivery deadline.
The lead time configuration features in the Odoo 17 Sales Module offer a clear view of the timeframes needed for sales-related activities like supplies acquisition, production, transportation, and delivery. This also helps customers to estimate product delivery time and order products according to their plans.