Cycle Time
The total elapsed time required to complete one unit or one cycle of a production process from start to finish. Cycle time includes processing time, wait time, and move time, and is a critical metric for capacity planning, scheduling, and identifying improvement opportunities.
RELATED TERMS
Takt Time
The rate at which products must be completed to meet customer demand, calculated by dividing available production time by customer demand. Takt time sets the pace for production and helps balance workloads across operations to achieve smooth, synchronized flow without overproduction or shortages.
Throughput
The rate at which a manufacturing system produces finished goods, typically measured as units per hour or per shift. Throughput is determined by the system's bottleneck operation and represents the actual productive output that generates revenue.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness
A metric that measures manufacturing productivity by multiplying three factors: Availability (uptime), Performance (speed), and Quality (good units produced). An OEE score of 85% is considered world-class, while most manufacturers operate between 60-70%. OEE identifies losses and improvement opportunities in equipment utilization.
Bottleneck
The operation or resource in a production process that limits overall system throughput because it has the lowest capacity or longest cycle time. Identifying and managing bottlenecks is critical because improving non-bottleneck operations does not increase total system output.
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