Key takeaways
  • Takt time = available production time / customer demand. It is the rhythm the customer sets, not a measure of how fast you can work.
  • Cycle time is how long your process actually takes. When cycle time exceeds takt time, you cannot meet demand without overtime or another line.
  • Recalculate takt whenever demand or shift pattern changes, or you will be balancing to a number that expired last quarter.
The formula
Available time รท demand

A shift of 8 hours with 30 minutes of breaks gives 450 minutes of available time. If the customer needs 300 units, takt time is 1.5 minutes. One unit must leave the line every 90 seconds to keep up, no faster and no slower.

How to calculate it

  • Take the scheduled production time for the period, in minutes or seconds.
  • Subtract planned non-production time: breaks, scheduled meetings, planned changeovers.
  • Do not subtract breakdowns or unplanned stops. Those are performance problems, not reductions in available time.
  • Divide by the units the customer requires in that period.

Example: two shifts of 480 minutes, 40 minutes of planned breaks each, so 880 minutes available. Demand of 1,100 units gives a takt time of 0.8 minutes, or 48 seconds per unit.

Takt time versus cycle time versus lead time

  • Takt time is set by the customer. It is demand expressed as a rhythm.
  • Cycle time is set by your process. How long one unit actually takes at a station.
  • Lead time is set by your whole system. From order to delivery, including all the waiting.

The useful comparison is cycle time against takt time at each station. Any station whose cycle time exceeds takt is a bottleneck that caps the whole line.

What to do when cycle time exceeds takt

  • Rebalance work between stations before adding people or equipment. Imbalance is the most common and cheapest cause.
  • Remove non-value work at the bottleneck first: walking, searching, double-handling.
  • Reduce changeover time if the bottleneck loses capacity to setups.
  • Only then consider a parallel station or additional shift.

The mistake that makes takt useless

Calculating it once and treating it as fixed. Takt is a function of demand and available time, and both move. A takt time set against last quarter's demand will either drive overproduction or hide a genuine capacity shortfall.