Takt Time
The heartbeat of customer demand
What Is Takt Time?
The rate at which products must be completed to meet customer demand—available production time divided by customer demand.
Takt time (from the German word Takt, meaning "pulse" or "beat") is the rhythm of customer demand. It tells you how often a finished unit must come off the line to meet demand. If customers want 480 units per day and you have 480 minutes of production time, takt time is 1 minute per unit.
Takt time is different from cycle time (how long a task actually takes) and lead time (total time from order to delivery). Takt time is a target derived from customer demand. If your cycle time is longer than takt time, you can't meet demand. If it's shorter, you may overproduce.
Understanding takt time helps balance work across stations, identify bottlenecks, and design flow. It also provides a clear target: if takt time is 2 minutes and a task takes 2.5 minutes, you know exactly how much you need to improve.
- •Balancing work across multiple stations or workers
- •Understanding if you can meet customer demand
- •Identifying bottlenecks (cycle time > takt time)
- •Designing production or service cells
- •Staffing decisions based on demand
- •Highly variable demand with no predictable pattern
- •Project-based work with unique deliverables
- •When demand changes faster than you can rebalance
- •Confusing takt time with cycle time
- •Using theoretical available time instead of actual
- •Not accounting for breaks, changeovers, downtime
- •Optimizing one station below takt while others are over
- •Setting takt time based on capacity instead of demand
Standard Example
Takt Time Calculation: Order Fulfillment Line
Given:
• Customer demand: 200 orders/day
• Available time: 8 hours/shift × 1 shift = 480 minutes
• Planned downtime: 40 minutes (breaks, meetings)
• Available production time: 440 minutes
Takt Time = Available Time ÷ Customer Demand
Takt Time = 440 min ÷ 200 orders = 2.2 minutes per order
What This Means:
• One order must be completed every 2.2 minutes
• Every station must be able to complete its work within 2.2 min
• If picking takes 3 minutes, picking is a bottleneck
Current Cycle Times:
| Station | Cycle Time | vs. Takt |
|---------|-----------|----------|
| Picking | 3.0 min | Over (bottleneck) |
| Packing | 1.8 min | Under |
| Labeling | 0.9 min | Under |
Actions:
1. Split picking into two parallel stations
2. Combine packing and labeling (rebalance)
3. New cycle times: Picking 1.5 min, Pack+Label 2.1 min
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