Takt time
Takt time sets the rhythm production must match to meet demand: available working time divided by required output. A plant running 450 minutes a day against demand of 300 units has a takt time of 90 seconds per unit. Takt is derived from the customer, not the equipment; it states how fast the line must run, not how fast it can.
Examples
Computing takt: Two 450-minute shifts give 54,000 seconds a day. Demand is 600 units, so takt is 90 seconds. Station 4 measures 104 seconds: it is the bottleneck, and moving two tasks to station 5 brings every station under 88 seconds.
Demand steps up: A product launch raises demand to 750 units a day and takt falls to 72 seconds. The plant splits the longest station into two and adds one operator per shift, cheaper than the Saturday overtime it had been running.
Capacity audit: Before awarding 340,000 units a year, a buyer computes a required takt of 40 seconds at the supplier's quoted staffing. The cell's demonstrated cycle time is 43 seconds, so the award is made contingent on a second fixture and a verified run-at-rate.
Definition
The word comes from the German for a musical beat, and the concept entered lean manufacturing through Toyota. Takt is the denominator everything balances against, and it is routinely confused with two neighbors. Cycle time is what a station actually takes per unit; lead time is the elapsed time for one unit to cross the entire flow. The confusion is expensive: a line can have every station's cycle time under takt and still quote a six-week lead time because of the queues sitting between stations.
Line balancing distributes work so each station's cycle time sits just below takt; any station above takt is the bottleneck and sets the real output rate. Takt also moves: when demand rises from 600 to 750 units a day, takt drops from 90 to 72 seconds and the line must rebalance, add people, or add hours. Buyers run the same arithmetic in capacity planning audits, and kanban loop sizes are calculated from it: a supplier whose measured cycle time sits at 98% of required takt has no headroom for growth, scrap, or downtime.
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