Takt time = available production time ÷ units the customers need. It's the pace you have to make things at to keep up with orders: one unit every so many minutes. A popcorn maker with 2,400 gift tins to fill in 20 days of six production hours has 7,200 minutes, so its takt time is 3 minutes a tin. Each tin takes 5 minutes of work, so one person can't keep up: they'd make 1,440 and fall 960 short. Two people, with the work split so neither station takes more than 3 minutes a tin, make 2,571. Below is the formula, the December tins, how to balance the stations, takt against cycle time, and a free calculator.
The short version
- Takt time = available time ÷ units needed, in the same period.
- Available time is production time only: take out breaks, cleaning and changeovers.
- Add up the work in one unit; work ÷ takt = the fewest people it takes.
- Split the work into stations; no station's minutes a unit should be over the takt time.
- The slowest station sets what you can make: available time ÷ its minutes.
- TaroStack records each batch's labor minutes, and on Standard plans the week against your hours. More below.
The formulas
| To find | Formula | The December tins |
|---|---|---|
| Available time | Days × production hours × 60 | 20 × 6 × 60 = 7,200 min |
| Takt time | Available time ÷ units needed | 7,200 ÷ 2,400 = 3.0 min |
| People needed, at least | Work in a unit ÷ takt time | 5.0 ÷ 3.0 = 1.67, so 2 |
| What you can make | Available time ÷ slowest station's minutes | 7,200 ÷ 2.8 = 2,571 |
Takt time is set by the customers; cycle time, the minutes a station takes for a unit, is set by you. The job is to bring every station's cycle time under the takt time. How much a kitchen can make in a week is worked out in how to calculate production capacity.
An example: December's gift tins
Copper Kettle Popcorn, a made-up kettle corn and caramel corn maker in Columbus, Ohio, I use in these examples, has 2,400 one-gallon gift tins of three flavors to fill between December 1 and 20, for shops, office gifts and online orders. The kitchen produces six hours a day; the rest of the day is cleaning, shipping and the market. One tin takes:
| Task | Minutes a tin |
|---|---|
| Pop and coat | 1.2 |
| Cool and break up | 0.6 |
| Label the tins, in batches | 0.4 |
| Fill the tin, three flavors | 1.5 |
| Lid and seal | 0.5 |
| Pack in a shipping box | 0.8 |
| Work in a tin | 5.0 |
At 5 minutes a tin, one person makes 1,440 tins in 7,200 minutes. That's 960 short of the orders, and no amount of working faster closes a gap of 40%.
Balancing the stations
The first split was the obvious one: one person on the kettle, one filling and packing.
| Station | First split | Minutes | Balanced | Minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pop, coat, cool | 1.8 | Pop, coat, cool, label tins in batches | 2.2 |
| 2 | Fill, lid, seal, label, pack | 3.2 | Fill, lid, seal, pack | 2.8 |
In the first split, station 2 takes 3.2 minutes a tin, over the 3.0 takt, so it would make 2,250 tins and the kettle would sit idle waiting for it. Moving the labeling to station 1, done in batches while the kettle runs, brings station 2 to 2.8 minutes and station 1 to 2.2, both under the takt. The slowest station now makes 2,571 tins in the 20 days, 171 more than the orders, about a day's slack for a burnt batch or a late lid delivery.
Takt time, cycle time and lead time
Takt time is the pace demand asks for. Cycle time is the minutes a station or person takes for one unit, measured with a stopwatch over a run, not guessed. Lead time is how long an order takes from being placed to being shipped, waiting included. Takt time only makes sense for a steady run of similar units, like December's tins; for a week of mixed small batches, planning by hours is the better tool. How a production schedule lays those batches out is in production schedule example.
Get the calculator
Download the takt time calculator. List each task with its minutes a unit and the station that does it; type the working days, production hours a day and the units your customers need. The takt time, the fewest people it takes, each station's minutes against the takt, and what the slowest station and one person alone can make fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
A takt time assumes every tin is the same and every day the same. December isn't: the orders for the office gifts come in a lump on December 8, the caramel needs a different kettle, and the tins arrive a day late. A sheet can say the pace; it can't move the week's batches when the lids are late, or say whether the corn and sugar on the shelf cover 2,400 tins. How to stock up ahead of a season is in seasonal inventory.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack records each batch's labor minutes, and on Standard plans the week against your hours.
Minutes on every batch. Each batch of kettle corn records its labor minutes beside its ingredients, so the real minutes a tin takes come from the batches, not a stopwatch on one good afternoon.
Enough for 2,400 tins? "What could I make right now" says how many tins the corn, sugar, oil and empty tins on the shelf allow, and the reorder list says what to buy first, in days of cover, with each supplier's lead time.
The week against your hours. On Standard, planning sets work centers and their hours, so a week's plan doesn't promise more tins than the kettle and the filling table can make, and flags what will run short or arrive too late. Planning and its capacity schedule are on Standard at $99 a month.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Minutes a tin | Timed once | Labor minutes on every batch |
| Enough tins and corn for the orders? | Count the shelf | What could I make right now |
| What to order for December | A guess | Reorder list in days of cover |
| A week that promises too much | Found on Friday | Capacity against work centers (Standard) |
Recipes, batches and reorder lists are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.