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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$er
July 2019 #11240 Page #22
Measure the Tempo of Your Operation
M
y wife Dianne and I were recently going through some of our old family photos and I came across this photo of Dianne’s Dad, Jack Hendershot, as a teenager on his bike delivering ice in the early Ben Hershey 4Ward Consulting Group, LLC ’50s. For those who may not know, before the advent of refrigeration and freezing technology, ice was cut from lakes and rivers during the winter and stored in insulated places for use during warmer months. It was delivered to customers and placed into what was then an early version of the refrigerator or “ice box.” Young Jack was part of the team who would deliver ice blocks from the insulated storage facility and drop the block into the customer’s ice box. Reading some history on early ice block companies, one of the challenges was meeting customer demand while not losing the volume of ice during delivery. From what I understand of family history, Jack would spend time prior to leaving the insulated warehouse so he could figure out by hand the number of deliveries he needed to make and what plan would result in the least amount of loss of ice along the way. I imagine that Jack likely figured out the amount of time he could spend at each stop and created a cadence for his time. Fast forward a few decades and we’re still trying to accomplish a similar feat—today’s manufacturing and distribution demands we figure out what our capacity is, and how much product can be delivered each day. Jack Hendershot Circa early 1950s
Today, we measure capacity and the tempo of our operation using Takt time(s). Though I hear some around us babble about what they think they know, until you dive in and actually know the operation, the processes, and the requirements of the customer, you would be hard pressed to figure what was the time required to produce an order (design, pulling a load, manufacturing a truss, completing a door, etc.).
What is Takt Time? Takt time is the maximum amount of time in which a product needs to be produced/ designed/pulled-together in order to satisfy customer demand. The term comes from the German word “takt,” which means “pulse.” Set by customer demand, takt creates the pulse or rhythm across all processes in a business to ensure continuous flow and utilization of capacities (e.g., man and machine). You might ask yourself, “why do we need to know takt time?” First, takt ensures that all the capacity in a business is planned and utilized and still meets overall customer demand. By and large, takt will help to deliver the right product at the right time in the right quantity to the customer. Second, takt creates a constant pulse across your processes, which will immediately highlight capacity issues, synchronization issues among processes, quality issues, and many others. Continued next page
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