The need to develop order fulfilment cycle often starts from customers’ request. Customers are increasingly demanding short cycle times and they consider short order fulfilment cycle time as a very important factor when choosing suppliers. Leaving order later and receiving order faster is becoming more important all the time. If businesses are able to combine a great product with fast deliveries and late order cut-off times, they will gain competitive edge over their competitors.

The purpose of this research was to investigate a case company’s current exporting order fulfilment cycle in dairy industry and what sort of adjustments are required to expedite this cycle from three days to two days. The research intended to identify what operational adjustments are needed, how the customer will be affected by the change and what sort of costs may emerge from deploying the change. Furthermore, the costs and benefits of the change were evaluated from point of view of the case company and its customers. The empirical data for the study was collected through observations, surveys and documentation as the researcher was involved with the case company’s key processes. To analyse better the possible impacts of the faster order fulfilment, the case company ran a 6-week simulation with faster cycle for one of their customer’s.

The simulation confirmed that the company is able to operate in a faster 2-day-cycle with-out the need of major investments or adjustments. The quality of the supply chain was not affected by the change. The main factor for success on the faster order fulfilment will be the succeeding of sales planning and forecasts made by them. Speeding up the order fulfilment cycle holds numerous of significant benefits for both the supplier and the customer with very few costs.