AN ALERT MECHANISM FOR THE RELEASE LATENESS

The impact of releasing a product after its required date might carry negative consequences for the manufacturer. This paper presents an ale rt mechanisms for the risk involved by not releasing a product on time . The alert mechanism is the delay tolerance index (DTI), which is a f unction of the value or importance of the product and the lateness of its release. DTI has the characteristic of being 1 when there is no de lay and approaches 0 (zero) when the delay is intolerable. An addition al benefit of the alert mechanism is that it serves as performance mea sure for the manufacturer. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.