RESOLVING TERMINOLOGICAL CONFLICTS

TAKT TIME CYCLE TIME LEAD-TIME THROUGHPUT PRODUCTIVITY

TAKT TIME
"Takt" is the German word for the baton that an orchestra conductor uses to regulate the speed, beat or timing at which musicians play. Takt Time is "Beat Time", "Rate Time" or "Heart Beat". Lean Production uses Takt Time as the rate that a completed product needs to be finished in order to meet customer demand.

If you have a Takt Time of two minutes that means every two minutes a complete product, assembly or machine is produced off the line. Every two hours, two days or two weeks, whatever your sell rate is your Takt Time.

How is Takt Time established? The customers buying rate establishes Takt Time. It's the rate at which the customer buys your product. So this means that over the course of a day, week, month, or year the customers you sell to are buying at a rate of one every two minutes.

What happens if the customers buy fewer products? You can't predict when and how much a customer will buy. But if customer demand falls for an extended period of time then the Takt time should change. This means that if you are producing at a Takt Time of one every two minutes and the customers demand fall to a rate of one every 3 minutes. Then your takt Time should increase or become more. Your Takt Time should increase to 3 minutes and production staffing should be set accordingly.

What happens if the customers buy more?

Then your Takt Time will decrease. You would lower your Takt Time to make more products in a shorter amount of time. This means if your customer buy more than your 2 minute Takt Time. Then you would lower your Takt Time to match the sell rate and increase staffing accordingly.

TAKT TIME
Producing to Takt Time with optimal staffing is where you want to be. Where you have the right amount of people to produce your product within your established Takt Time.
CONSEQUENCES OF IMBALANCED TAKT TIME - Imbalances in Takt Time, especially in older facilities, drive security inventories and buffer space.

CYCLE TIME
Cycle time is the total time from the beginning to the end of your process, as defined by you and your customer. Cycle time includes process time, during which a unit is acted upon to bring it closer to an output, and delay time, during which a unit of work is spent waiting to take the next action. In a nutshell - Cycle Time is the total elapsed time to move a unit of work from the beginning to the end of a physical process. (Note - Cycle Time is not the same as Lead Time!).

LEAD TIME
Time interval between the initiation and the completion of a production process In terms of a supply chain, the total time needed for an order to be processed Time it takes to deliver parts from the time we receive the order

THROUGHPUT
Conventional definition: Period required for a material, part, or subassembly to pass through the manufacturing process. Evolved Understanding: Rate at which inventory is converted into sell or revenue

PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity refers to metrics and measures of output from production processes, per unit of input. Labor productivity, for example, is typically measured as a ratio of output per labor-hour.