Why should you use Takt Time and how to do it (Part 2)

You can’t simply do Takt Time production without some specific crawl plan. If you do not prepare well in this first phase, you will run into a lot of problems and even increase the amount of waste in the conversion process.

The top advice in adopting Takt Time for managers is to take the time to seriously plan and put things in place before making any changes. The first thing they should do is string the related data to standardize it into a unified database for use in the analysis:

• Average customer orders – Knowing the type of product you need to produce and the quantity of products your customers want is important. This step should be broken down based on historical data. For example, looking at monthly or even weekly shopping trends can be a good start for you.
• Maturity Date – In addition to specifying how much each product your customer needs cyclically, you’ll also want to know the maturity date your customer is expecting. For example, some customers may pre-order their needs so you will be able to prioritize other orders in this case. This is in contrast to cyclical orders that are close to their due date, whether registered sooner or later.
• Ideal production rate – It is essential to have a clear understanding of how many pieces of product you can produce per hour / shift without compromising on quality. This will help you schedule your production to balance product quality and profitability and build an optimal production environment for your employees.
• Sickness / Vacation Trends – In most regions, the number of sick days and vacation days usually increases or decreases with the trend or with the season. Know these trends so you can better plan your staffing.

In addition to the above factors, you can find many other characteristics that you can use to help improve the Takt Time production planning and implementation process.

Through establishing a production scenario that is integrated with customer needs, Takt Time provides the organization with an efficient tool to measure, control waste and improve productivity. Instead of focusing on productivity output (number of products per hour or minute). Takt Time aims to produce products on schedule according to customer requirements and to create a smooth flow throughout the entire process with the same production rhythm. It also plays a role in keeping rhythm and balancing production to create a flexible pull system.

Source: Kaizen News