Takt Time is the production rate at which a line or cell needs to produce to meet customer demand, without excess or shortfall. It is calculated by dividing the available production time (shift, day, week) by demand over the same period. If a line has 480 available minutes per shift and demand is 240 units, the takt time is 2 minutes per unit — meaning a part should come off the line every 2 minutes.
Takt time is the anchor of lean planning. Comparing takt with the real cycle time (how long a unit actually takes to be produced) immediately reveals whether the line is balanced, whether there are bottlenecks or whether there is slack. Workstations with a cycle time greater than takt are bottlenecks, concentrating improvement attention. Workstations with a much lower cycle time waste capacity or produce work-in-progress stock that is not consumed.
In KORA Productivity, the real cycle time is measured per order and per workstation — the automatic comparison with the configured takt alerts in real time to imbalances. The daily production meeting stops discussing 'what happened yesterday' and starts discussing 'how to balance the line today'.