Branch time: the heartbeat of Lean Manufacturing

Branch time is an essential Lean that synchronizes the speed of production with the speed of customer demand. It is the available production time divided by total customer demand. The primary goal is to avoid overproduction and align production exactly with what the customer wants, when the customer wants it.

How do you calculate it?

Branch time is calculated by dividing total available work time by customer demand.

• Example 1: If a factory operates for 480 minutes per day and customers order 240 products per day, the branch time is 2 minutes. This means that a product must be completed every 2 minutes to meet demand.
• Example 2: If the customer wants two new products per month, the branch time is two weeks.

Historical background

The term "Branch Time" (derived from the German word "Takt" for a precise interval of time, such as a musical measure) was first used in the German aircraft industry in the 1930s. The concept was adopted by Toyota in the 1950s and later widely used, becoming the foundation of the Toyota Production System. Toyota recalculates the branch time for its processes on a monthly basis and adjusts it as needed to continually align production with changing customer demand.

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