Posts tagged Takt Time

Greenhouse Nursery Puts Lean into Action, Cutting Tree-Shipping Time in Half

Seven Lean Tools Businesses Can Apply Immediately to Help Improve Performance

What would you say if you heard the word Heijunka in your next staff meeting? “Bless you?” Maybe. Nobody would fault you. Heijunka (pronounced hi-JUNE-kuh) is a word that many …

For the ease of understanding, this author is using the word ‘piece’ to mean (in the generic sense) the making of a tangible product. It could be an ice cream cone, a widget, or an automobile. One of the tenets of lean is single piece flow. Instead of building up a stack of inventory between the steps in the process, the idea with single piece flow (also known as one piece flow), is to build at the pulse rate of customer demand. This pulse rate of customer demand, known as takt time, ebbs and flows over time. With single piece flow, the idea is to make a piece only when the customer asks for one.

In the war on waste, the team needs to understand the customer demand rate. Think of a metronome (the ticking, swinging tool used by musicians to maintain constant timing). The metronome can be adjusted to different beats per minute. Takt Time is similar to the metronome. The team can adjust the takt time if it knows the average consumption rate of customer demand. If the rate of making a product is slightly faster than the takt time, there is very little built up inventory; hence minimal waste. If however, if it team ignores takt time, they are in danger of not having enough capacity to keep up with demand or too much capacity will be produce stacked up inventory. If there is inventory, there has to be a place to put it. There is a cost associated with that space. If there is inventory, it also has to be moved. There is a cost associated with that movement as well, and so on.