Takt Image
Creating an awareness of takt time in areas of a production process where products cannot be delivered and taken away at the frequency of takt time.
On a final assembly line, takt time is easy to keep in mind because the line produces products at the rate of takt time. However, in upstream production cells and shared processes, such as stamping, a sense of takt time—which is the heartbeat of customer demand—may be hard to achieve.
Takt image often can be achieved by removing finished goods and delivering production signals at a multiple of takt time proportional to pack-out quantity or conveyance size. Thus a cell operating to a takt time of one minute that ships products downstream in pack sizes of 20 units would have a takt image of 20 minutes. While not as good as takt time, takt image still makes it possible to know within a few minutes if the process is out of step with customer demand.