Final answer:
On-time delivery is crucial in operations and supply chain management, affecting customer satisfaction and competitive advantage. It includes practices like continuous and uniform schedules or just-in-time strategies for efficiency and waste reduction.
Step-by-step explanation:
On-time delivery is an aspect of a firm's performance in operations management and supply chain management. This concept focuses on the timely receipt of goods or services and is essential in ensuring customer satisfaction and maintaining a competitive edge. What Richard's Furniture Company practices could be linked to a continuous and uniform delivery schedule, which is a component of logistics within operations management.
Conversely, the just-in-time delivery method discussed, popularized by Japanese car manufacturers in the 1980s, is an inventory strategy to increase efficiency and decrease waste by receiving goods only as they are needed in the production process, leading to various economic and quality control benefits.