Takt time is the actual available production time divided by the number of units that must be produced. A Takt board is a production tracking board that captures the variances between planned production and actual production.
This variance can be tracked by shift, by hour, by day or by work order. The board is often positioned on the shop floor in order to keep employees up-to-date on the company's progress.
Comments can be added to the Takt board any time production falls short of expected volumes. The comments are meant to outline the causes of work stoppages, delays and downtime.
Understanding Takt Times Versus Cycle Times
Takt times are different from cycle times. In fact, there are a number of ways to refer to cycle times. There are cycle times that relate to individual operations in a given work cell and then there are more generic references to cycle times.
For instance, cycle time could define the time it takes a company to receive a customer order and deliver it to their customer’s dock. There are even sales, marketing and project cycle times. Ultimately, cycle times can be generic and their meaning depends upon how they are being referenced.
Takt times differ in that they measure how much is produced within the available time for production. The available time is not simply the total time within an eight hour shift. This topic was covered in a previous post about how to calculate productivity rates.
Ultimately, the amount of time available for actual production is different from the time a company pays its employees in production. What does this mean?
In order to answer this question, consider what happens during an eight hour shift. First, if we convert those eight hours into minutes it would be eight multiplied by 60 minutes per hour. This gives us 480 minutes. However, production doesn’t work a full 480 minutes. We need to subtract set up times, breaks in the morning and afternoon, and closing times or clean up times at the end of a shift.
Let’s assume it’s 15 minutes in the morning to set up, two 10 minute breaks in the morning and afternoon, and 15 minutes to shut down at the end of a given shift. That’s a total of 50 minutes where production isn’t happening. Therefore, our board will measure available time for production by taking 480 minutes minus 50 minutes. That leaves us with 430 minutes of actual work time.
Our calculation for Takt time involves total shift time minus non-production time divided by the number of units to produce.
Takt Time = (Total shift time – non-production time) / Number of Units to Produce
If we had 60 units to produce, the Takt time would be 430 divided by 60 which would then give us 7.16 or 7 minutes and 16 seconds. Granted, you usually go the other way in that calculation. First, you determine how long it takes to manufacture a given product and then you divide that time by the total available work time in order to come up with the scheduled production volume. However, I simply did it this way to show the relation between the two.
We want to track actual production against scheduled production on a board. Here is the Sample excel Takt Board for production tracking. The steps to fill out the board are outlined below. Ultimately, the excel sheet is just to show how the board works and the calculations involved.
First, enter the amount of units that are scheduled by the hour, shift or work order under the heading "Scheduled (Units)". This can be done one hour at a time or in advance for the entire day.
Second, input the actual production volumes by hour under the heading "Actual (Units)." This is where you are stating what was actually produced.
Third, when your actual production is short of planned production, then the excel sheet will register the number of units you were short and it will appear in RED font under the title variance. If you produced more than required, then the color will remain neutral (not red).
The graph above isn't a necessity. Some companies like to show scheduled units, actual units, variances and the percentages as a weekly or monthly summary on a graph. Others do it daily and or have the graph alongside the board. You want to track your production throughput and itemize the root causes of high cycle times, work stoppages and machine downtime.
This is but a simple and effective tool companies can use to track how well they are at attaining their production goals.
It's best to place the board in a high-traffic area. Companies can use the comments section to track how often downtime occurs and the frequency of those occurrences.
The comments can then be tracked so the company can define how often a given problem occurs, the costs of doing nothing, and the potential increase in production throughput if the problem is removed as a going concern.
The above video is taken from Cycle Time Tracking & Variance Analysis in Excel for Small Manufacturers