The customer takt (or takt time) is one of the fundamentals for determining the speed of a production system. After my post on How to determine Takt Times, this second post on takt times gives a bit of history, and then goes into more details about possible pitfalls and problems when calculating the customer takt. I also added an example for easier understanding.
Practice
How to determine Takt Times
The customer takt (or takt time) is one of the fundamentals for determining the speed of a production system. It represents the available time divided by the average demand of the customer during that time. Effectively this is the average time between the order of one item. Whenever you design a new production system or change an existing system, one of the early data inputs you need is the customer takt. While the customer takt can be simply calculated by dividing the demand by the time available for production, there are many more details needed to understand it fully.
On the Different Ways to Measure Production Speed
The speed of your production system is a key aspect of your manufacturing system, and controlling it is important for the success of your organization. Unfortunately, there are many different and confusing ways to measure the manufacturing speed. Even a simple question on how to call a speed is often confused, with many practitioners using the same term for different measurements, or different terms for the same measurements. This post aims to give an overview of what is out there, and what it is good for.
Practical Tips for Value Stream Mapping
After discussing when to do value stream maps, the symbols, and the basics of value stream mapping, I want to give some more practical tips for value stream mapping. What tools should you use? Do you use a computer (yuck) or a pen and paper (yup)? I’ll also summarize some generally helpful hints in drawing a value stream.
Theory and Practice of Supermarkets – Part 2
In my last post, I described how supermarkets work in theory. But while knowing the theory helps, actually creating a working supermarket is much more difficult. Are there situations where supermarkets are not so useful? (Hint: Yes!). And what is needed to have a working supermarket? Let’s find out!
How to Make 5S Stick
In my last post I detailed the 5S method (and its variants 4S, 6S, and so on). However, knowing the theory is the easy part. Successfully implementing 5S is much more difficult, and industry is ripe with anecdotes on failed 5S implementations. Here I will give you a few tips on how to increase your chances of success. However, there is no magic bullet. Cleaning and organizing a shop floor is hard work, and keeping it that way is even harder.
Shop Floor Etiquette – Part 2
This is the second post of a two-post series on shop floor etiquette (first post here). I find this a very necessary post, as I have way too often observed visitors to the shop floor lacking manners (and occasionally, I may have lacked manners myself 🙁 ). Hence, please do not treat this post as optional, but try to incorporate it into your daily shop floor work. Being accepted on the shop floor is crucial for any successful change on the shop floor.
Shop Floor Etiquette – Part 1
There is often a distinct lack of appreciation and good manners toward shop floor employees. Yet, lean manufacturing happens on the shop floor. Not in Excel, not in PowerPoint, not in meeting rooms. As such, you need to become part of the shop floor in order to change the shop floor. For this, you need the support and goodwill of the people on the shop floor. The first step to getting their support is to have good shop floor manners. Due to the length of the post, I have divided it into two posts. These two posts will give you some guidelines on how to behave on the shop floor. (The second post is here)