Formula for Takt time

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What is the formula for takt time?
What is takt time?
How is it important in lean manufacturing?

These are the questions I asked my professor when I heard about this term. I’ll answer all of these in detail over here.

But if you already know about Takt time and you are just confused between Lead time, Cycle time, Takt time or throughput time you can read this article.

Before we going to our subject, ‘formula for takt time’, let’s start with understanding what is lean Manufacturing. Because both are well related. You will also get downloadable excel takt time calculator at end of this article.

What is Lean Manufacturing?

Lean manufacturing is the manufacturing philosophy of maximising productivity and simultaneously minimising the waste (anything that doesn’t add value for customers) . And there’s no doubt that lean manufacturing has been a huge success all over the world, and reason is that it helps organization by moving to pull system from traditional push system.

Now you must be wondering all this is good, but where is the Takt time in this whole scenario? If yes, then this brings us to our next question – what is takt time and how is it important in lean manufacturing

What is takt time and importance of takt time in lean manufacturing?

Takt time can be defined as the ratio of Total available production time to Average customer demand. Please note that it’s important to exclude all the non working time like breaks, shift changeovers, maintainenace etc.

In simpler words it can defined as ” The rate at which 1 product needs to be processed” In order to meet the customer demand on time.”

Takt time = Total available time/ Total customer demand

Let’s try to understand this with an example

Let’s say you are a Production engineer at “MFR – cricket Kits”. The company has received an urgent order of **10,000 bats** (ipl craze you see 😁) and you have only **1 week** to deliver the order. Your HOD shares this information with you and asks you to set the targets for the production line.

By this time I am sure at least you understood that you need to find the Takt time in this scenario. So let’s see what sort of data do we have to calculate Takt time over here.

MFR – Cricket kits works for 4 days in a week ( you are so lucky 😄). Everyday you have only 1 shift that goes for 12 hrs. Also in 1 shift you have one 30 mins lunch break and two 15 mins tea break. Apart from this there are no scheduled downtimes this week. Using the formula of Takt time we will get

Total available time (mins) = 4 X ((12X 60) – 30 -15 -15)

Total available time (mins) = 2640

Takt time = Total available time/ Total demand

Takt time = 2640/10000

Takt time = 0.264 mins or 15.84 secs

This means MFR needs to manufacture at least 1 bat in every 15.84 secs

I think it’s clear now Takt time is a target which forms the basis for establishing the pull system. And this is the reason why understanding Takt time is so important to implement lean manufacturing system. Similarly we use take time for Line balancing and reducing Mura (Unevenness). Also Takt time can help us in avoiding overproduction waste.

You can use this KIE Takt time calculator for finding takt time with ease. Also you can download this simple excel template and calculate Takt time in few seconds that too offline

Takt-time-calculator-offline Download

Hope this article has solved all your doubts regarding Takt time.