Delivery allows you to take programs developed in LispWorks, and turn them into smaller, standalone applications, as executables or dynamic libraries. This process is called delivery.
The principle behind application delivery is quite simple: an application does not use everything in the LispWorks development environment when it is running, so there is no need for those unused parts of LispWorks to be in the image. Delivery can discard the unnecessary code and create a single executable image file that contains just what is needed to run the application.
Because the delivered application (sometimes called a runtime ) is smaller, it can reduce virtual memory paging and thereby run faster than it did under LispWorks. Delivery can also actively speed code up by, for example, converting single-method generic functions into ordinary functions. Packing it all into a single file means it is simple to start up and can be run without running LispWorks as well.
LispWorks Delivery User Guide - 13 Dec 2011