when the finished product is sent to a customer many factors are out of the hands of the company though the company can control how fast an item gets off the production line and onto a delivery vessel a company is often at the whim of whatever delivery method they choose these factors include 
example of lead timeimagine a large festival that takes place during the first week of august every year that attracts 100 000 people on average and typically sells 15 000 festival t shirts the vendor that supplies the t shirts needs one business day to complete the shirt design one business day to have it proofed and make any necessary fixes one business day to print the shirts and two business days to ship the items the lead time in this example would be five business days in other words the festival organizers need to place their order with the t shirt supplier at least five business days before the opening of the festival in order to get the shirts on time of course that lead time can be shortened in some extreme situations if the buyer is willing to pay a premium if t shirt sales on the first day of the festival exceed expectations festival organizers may decide to order additional shirts on the second day with the hope that they can be delivered by the third day since the shirts have already been designed and approved that means five days of lead time can be reduced to three to meet that shortened lead time the vendor would need to print the additional shirts as quickly as possible in order to ship them overnight for delivery the following morning additional factors can affect lead time in this example if festival organizers want a certain percentage of the t shirts to be fuchsia and the vendor does not regularly keep fuchsia t shirts in stock that can increase the lead time because the vendor will need to order shirts in that color 