5.02 - Teams and Natural Grouping

Overview

Variations in customer demand need to be accommodated by appropriate manufacturing systems without the practice of holding buffer stock which is wasteful.

Takt time is the time allowed by customer demand, process availability and process performance to produce a defect free part.

Takt time =	Process availability * Quality Performance * process performance
	Customer Demand

Changes in Takt time for a product caused by variations in customer demand require the manufacturing process to adopt an appropriate pace of production.

Natural group team size varies the pace of production by changing the size of a team operating a system and the group of operations they perform in the making of the product. Combinations of team size and operation sequence are planned in advance to minimise changeover in the event of a demand change. For example:-

Nine processes operated by two workers to takt time of 140 seconds

Nine processes operated by one worker to takt time of 280 seconds

Team sizing analyzes the constituent parts of standard working methods into:-

• Machine run time
• Walking Time
• Manual Operation Time
• Quality Check Times