Time has become a key success measure in business. Oftentimes, it is more important than other performance measures. For example, in marketing a product's success or failure often depends on "time-to-market," or how quickly a new product becomes available to the customer. One of many cycle time measures used in management, cycle time is the measure of a business cycle from beginning to end. Production cycle time refers to production activities, such as the total time required to produce a product. Order processing cycle time is used in the front office to determine the total time required to process an order. From a financial perspective, terms like cash-to-cash cycle time describe the amount of time a company takes to recover its financial investment. From a management perspective, cycle time is used to evaluate performance in all aspects of a business.

Cycle time has become the key...