An Important Form to Speak with Data

One of the most useful forms for recording and presenting data, for speaking with data, is the production control form.  I am including a sample here.

This form tells us how a production line, a production cell, or a single production operation is running hour-by-hour.  When used to its greatest advantage, a manager or supervisor can walk through a department and tell very quickly what operations most require attention.  The leaner the operation, the more critical this information can be. The information is recorded each hour by a production operator.

In the example above, the first column divides the day into one hour blocks.  In this case, we have started at 7 a.m. and carried it through 4 p.m.  The information in this column can be modified depending on the start time and the length of the shift.  For example a ten hour shift would have a couple more rows.  The form can have extra rows to be used when the operation is running overtime. A chart for second or third shift would have appropriate time labels in the first column.

Takt Time

One of the concepts used by companies that are moving toward leaner operations is takt time.  It is also a concept that is often misunderstood in companies that have had a little exposure to lean processes and have picked up the term.

Takt time is the beat at which we should make a product or component to be in synch with the needs of the customer. The customer may be an internal customer such as a downstream process, or it may be an external customer, a dealer or an end user. Takt is a German word for beat when the subject is music.  The baton used by a band or orchestra leader is called a taktstock.

Let us suppose that a customer of any type needs 900 units, widgets of some kind.  The factory works an 8-hour shift, but a half hour a day goes into breaks and other planned downtime, leaving 7.5 available hours.  Seven and a half hours times 60 minutes, times 60 seconds, equals 27,000 seconds of available time in a shift.  If we divide 27,000 seconds into 900 units, we find that our takt time is 30 seconds per unit.  To be perfectly synchronized with the customers requirements for a day, we need to produce one widget every 30 seconds and each operation in the process should take exactly 30 seconds.