In light of the unprecedented period of business activity we are working through, I thought it would be prudent to try and take the temperature of installers and discover what the state of lead times are in our sector right now.

Snapshot

This poll is simply a small research task and not intended to influence any part of the sector one way or another. However, I feel like right now it could be informative for the manufacturing of the supply chain to understand better the picture on the ground when it comes to installers.

Speak to installers on social media and there is a wide-ranging spectrum of lead times quoted by installers at the moment. Anywhere from 6-8 weeks all the way into 2021 now. Whilst this major spike in demand is good news for the entire supply chain, in that we all simply did not know what we might come back to work to, it has created a pinch point in the supply chain and its creaking. How long this will last is unknown, but I think it would be helpful for the manufacturing part of our supply chain to know, even if it is just a snapshot at this point, how long the order books are for installers right now.

I have written in a previous post about the need for us to accept longer lead times as the new normal for the time being. You can catch up on that article here. Even if demand were to fall away to a more sustainable level in a few weeks time, effects from that won’t be felt until many weeks after. Which means for fabricators this level of work could be with us well into November or even into Christmas. If so, there is no point in creating a rod for our own backs and trying to commit to lead times that right now simply aren’t practical.

Poll

Below is the poll that I am posing to installers. To help give a more accurate picture it would be useful if as many installers as possible could take part. I have swapped polling apps to make it simpler to take part. I appreciate that the Apester app I have used on previously polls was heavy with advertising – that was the free version I was using!

You can only vote once and the trends will show up once you have placed your vote. The poll will come to an end at the end of September, which should give me enough time to collate enough votes to create at least a semi-accurate picture.

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