“Takt Time” For a Warehouse – Lean Supply Chain Kaizen

To calculate Takt Time in manufacturing, you divide available production time by the number of products to be made (Customer demand), which tells you the time available to make one product (The Rhythm of Production). On the Warehouse Operations is not calculated in exactly the same way as manufacturing, but the concept is similar.

Its very important to mention that ones the Takt Time on Warehouse operation its very well understood, helps the Warehouse Managers to manage the daily operations, they are capable to know how long it takes to put away the different types of parts received in a shipment, how many parts must be put away in a day, how rapidly the parts must be put away to get the work done and what staffing level is required to achieve that.

For Warehouse the Takt Time calculation occurs, as follows:

The table below shows an example of the work to be done in a given time shift. In this case, parts are sorted into three categories, based on size. This sorting makes it possible to know how many parts can be away in 20 minutes.

The “X” numbers in the first column represent the commodity codes used to sort the products. The term “Lines” refers to how many line items in a particular category must be put away.

The formula for calculating Put – away assignments is

Lines / Put-away Qty. = Put-away assignments.

Which in this case becomes

(300 / 10) + (300/15) + (760/20) = 88 Assignments

Calculation of the Put-away Pace  (Takt Time) is

Takt Time (Put-away Pace) = [Shift Time (minutes)] / [Assignments] = 440 / 88 = 5 Minutes.

Or 

Takt Time (Put-away Pace) = [Available Time (minutes)] / [Demand Assignments] = 440 / 88 = 5 Minutes.

The required number of people is then calculated by dividing Put-away Time  (20 minutes) by the Put-away Pace (5 minutes), which determines that people are needed for this shift.

People Required = Put-away Time / Put-away Pace = 20 / 5 = 4

This is one example to give you the concept to calculate your own Warehouse Takt Time.

I hope this help you.