Experiment in Takt Time Planning Applied To Non-Repetitive Work

EXPERIMENT IN TAKT TIME PLANNING APPLIED
TO NON-REPETITIVE WORK
Meeli Linnik1, Klas Berghede2 and Glenn Ballard3
ABSTRACT
Takt time planning has been used in construction, but was limited to highly repetitive projects
such as highways, pipelines, high-rise buildings, and single family homes. This paper reports
on an experiment in takt time planning applied to non-repetitive work, at the Sutter Health
Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Sacramento, CA.
Takt time planning is based on location breakdown structures with the objective to make
work flow continuously. Expected benefits include reduction in project duration and
associated costs, increased transparency and predictability of work flow, increased ability to
define and deliver work packages of information and materials when needed, and improved
design of operations. All of these benefits were confirmed in the experiment.
This paper describes experiments in takt time planning, evaluates the findings, and
recommends further improvements in the takt time planning process for future experiments.
KEYWORDS
Collaboration, reliability, takt time planning, time compression, work flow.
INTRODUCTION
This paper reports on experiments in takt time planning at Sutter Health Anderson Lucchetti
Women’s and Children’s Center (WCC), a new 395,241 SF acute care hospital in midtown
Sacramento. The nine-story, 242-bed building is designed to be one of the leading pediatric
and women’s health centers in northern California. The Boldt Company is the project’s
construction manager/general contractor and EwingCole is the project’s architect. Sutter
Health requires that its capital projects be delivered using Lean Project Delivery, in
accordance with their Integrated Form of Agreement (IFOA) contract (Lichtig, 2005). Boldt
and EwingCole replaced a previous team mid-way through the project, and were challenged
to complete the project to time and cost targets by numerous design problems and changes.
Takt time is the rate of production matched to the demand rate for what is being produced.
Takt time planning refers to the use of appropriate location breakdown structures in each
phase of construction and allowing successive trades the same amount of time (the takt), to
complete their work in each location. Takt time planning was introduced at WCC first in the
1
Production Engineer, The Boldt Company, Sutter Medical Center Sacramento Project, 2710 Capitol
Avenue, CA 95816-6005, USA, Phone +1 415/710-2824
2
Production Manager, The Boldt Company, Western Operations, 2150 River Plaza Drive, Suite 255,
Sacramento, CA 95833
3
Research Director, Project Production Systems Laboratory (p2sl.berkeley.edu), 214 McLaughlin
Hall, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1712, USA, Phone +1 415/710-5531,
[email protected]
exterior framing phase4, then in the interior framing phase of hospital construction. Processes
for defining locations and the time allowed for each successive trade to complete work in
those locations were developed, tested and refined. Despite major challenges posed by design
changes and the imperfections inevitable in a first attempt, the feasibility and effectiveness
of takt time planning was demonstrated in these experiments.
Following this introduction, this paper includes sections on the roots of takt time
planning, expected benefits and costs, description of takt time planning in the interior framing
phase, findings, and conclusions.
ROOTS OF TAKT TIME PLANNING

Takt time is easiest to understand in a machine-paced flow line, where it is obvious that each
workstation along the line must complete its work during the time the product is in its work
zone. Otherwise, the product moves down the line not ready for the next workstation to add
its parts or perform its operations. To minimize movement of workers, work zones are kept
as small as possible, given the speed of the line and the capability of each workstation
(Baudin, 2002; Hopp & Spearman, 2008).
Takt time is also used in labor-paced flow lines. The use of takt time in fabrication shops
was published by Ballard, et al. in 2003, showing that productivity was more than doubled
in a precast concrete fabrication plant when work was organized in production cells, around
product families, and takt time scheduling and control was used. Productivity doubled
without any changes in labor, skills, technology, or design constructability. Another more
recent example of takt time use in labor paced flow lines is published by Yu, et al. in 2013.
Fabrication shops are similar to construction projects, because the pace and sequence of
work is driven by labor rather than by machines. However, in construction projects, the
product is fixed in the earth and the parts being assembled become too large to move through
workstations. This makes construction a type of fixed position manufacturing, in which the
workstations move through the product, rather than vice-versa. Breakthrough on this front
came with Kenley & Seppänen’s 2010 Location-Based Management for Construction, in
which the traditional activity-based work breakdown structures were replaced by location
breakdown structures. As Kenley and Seppänen note, location breakdown structures have
been used in construction for many years, but were restricted to highly repetitive construction
such as highways, pipelines, single family homes, and high-rise buildings, the most famous
of which is the Empire State Building (Wagner, 2002). Kenley and Seppänen’s work
promises to extend location breakdown structures to non-repetitive work and thus make it a
more broadly available alternative to activity-based planning.
Once given location breakdown structures, there is still another step to get to takt time
scheduling. The stated purpose of location-based management, according to Kenley and
Seppänen, is to eliminate ‘workers waiting on work’ and ‘work waiting on workers.’ When,
without stopping; i.e., the priority is avoiding ‘work waiting on workers’.
Two arguments can be made to support this priority, both drawn from Toyota. Taiichi
Ohno claimed that overproduction is the cause of most of the other forms of waste he
identified (Ohno, 1998). For example, inventory in excess of production needs accumulates
when work is done before downstream workstations are ready. Continuous flow of work
4
The exterior framing phase experimentation with takt time planning is described in a companion
paper “Takt Time Planning for Construction of Exterior Cladding”, by Frandson, Berghede &
Tommelein, IGLC 21.
means the work product is always being advanced, and hence, when perfectly realized, there
is no inventory in queue and no overproduction.
Liker (2004) included “Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface”
in the 14 principles of the Toyota Way. Continuous flow of work is needed in order to
reduce waste and to promote continuous learning and improvement.
To summarize, literature review reveals that moving from activity-based to location-
based breakdown structures is essential for applying the takt time concept in fixed position
manufacturing, which includes construction, and that a further variable is where priority is
placed when a choice must be made: on the flow of work or the flow of workers. Takt time
planning places priority on the continuous flow of work.
EXPECTED BENEFITS AND COSTS OF TAKT TIME PLANNING

The expected benefits of takt time planning are reduced project durations and costs. There is,
however, a risk of capacity loss. It is to be expected that one or several trades following one
another through locations such as rooms or pre-defined floor areas will require different
amounts of time to complete their work. The trade that requires the greatest amount of time
is naturally called the bottleneck trade. Whatever is done to increase the production rate of
the various trades, whether increasing productivity or adjusting capacity, some trades will go
faster and some will go slower through the pre-defined floor areas. Those who are faster than
the bottleneck trade risk losing capacity if, after trying to adjust capacity or change work
methods, they cannot find alternative uses, like backlog work, for any surplus. The bottleneck
trade risks losing capacity as a result of varying labor content from one area to another, again
unless capacity can be adjusted to variations in workload, or other productive uses can be
found for any excess capacity. The case study will include description of the methods used
to minimize capacity loss, such as reducing variation in production rates, and the methods
used to find productive uses for capacity in excess of what is needed for takt, such as
identifying workable backlog5 in each weekly work plan.
The assumed benefits and costs of takt time planning are summarized in Figure 1.
5
The usage of workable backlog to absorb otherwise excess capacity was not measured and tracked
in this experiment. However it is apparent from our experience that the amount of workable
backlog in this case study was not sufficient to reduce the pressure to improve the operations
in order to meet takt and did not have a negative effect to team’s motivation to seek gradual
improvements. Further research on the use of workable backlog in takt time planning is needed.

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EXPERIMENT IN TAKT TIME PLANNING APPLIED

ROOTS OF TAKT TIME PLANNING

EXPECTED BENEFITS AND COSTS OF TAKT TIME PLANNING

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