Lead Time

The stages are separate, and only some are ours

A “4 week lead time” hides a sequence, and confusion about where the clock starts causes most schedule disputes in this trade.

• Sample lead time — 5 to 10 working days for our standard platforms, from confirmed specification to a physical pack
• Sample approval — your engineering team’s review. Not our time, but it is on the calendar, and it is the stage most often left out of a plan
• Mass production — 2 to 4 weeks after sample approval
• Certification — where new testing is needed, weeks to months, running partly in parallel
• Tooling — where a new enclosure is required, its own block of time before production can start
• Freight — sea freight to Europe or North America is measured in weeks; air is days at several times the cost

Read those together and a first order for a genuinely new design is a months-long project, even though every individual figure is modest.

What actually causes delay

Rarely the factory. In our experience the top three are:

Late specification changes. A connector or cell change after sample approval restarts stages that were finished — and may invalidate certification tied to the old design.

Certification raised late. UL 2271 and KC both depend on external bodies and factory audits. Neither compresses because a launch date moved.

Slow approval. A sample sitting on a desk for three weeks costs exactly as much schedule as three weeks of production.

How to plan it

Work backwards from the launch date through every stage including freight and your own approval time, then add contingency at the certification step specifically, because it is the one you do not control.

And tell us the launch date at enquiry. If it is not achievable we would rather say so than quote optimistically and slip — the first is an inconvenience, the second is a missed season.