Takt time planning has recently received a lot of attention in lean construction community. However, very few empirical results have been reported. This paper presents a takt time planning case study from a closely related industry, cruise ship cabin refurbishment. The results of lean implementation in the case company have been very good, including productivity increase to 380% of baseline, WIP decrease of 99%, quality defect decrease of 99% and project lead time reduction of 73%. The paper reviews the process used and compares and contrasts the takt time method implemented by case company and the process proposed for construction in previous lean construction conferences. The implemented takt time method was found to be similar to the method proposed in previous lean construction conferences but it includes several additional process steps such as explicitly considering material logistics and garbage collection and real-time data collection. The main differences between project types are in logistics setup and business drivers impacting desire to cut lead time over improving resource efficiency. Interestingly, cycle time reduction achieved both goals in the case company. The contribution of this paper is to show the benefits of takt time planning and to propose additional components to takt time planning process.
Takt time planning, logistics, flow, work in progress
Heinonen, A. & Seppänen, O. 2016. Takt Time Planning: Lessons for Construction Industry from a Cruise Ship Cabin Refurbishment Case Study, 24th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction , -. doi.org/ a >
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