Key Points
- Cycle time is a measurement of how long it takes to complete a single task.
- Throughput time is a measurement of how long it takes a product to move through certain processes.
- Both can increase overall efficiency and minimize downtime in your workflow.
Cycle time vs. throughput time, do you know the difference? Typically, when we look at the steps of our workflow, you’ll want metrics to gauge effectiveness and efficiency. Depending on the scenario, you’ll want to use one of these two metrics while looking at the work time needed to complete a deliverable.
What is Cycle Time?
Cycle time can be defined as the amount of actual work time needed to complete one task. Any sort of downtime is excluded from cycle time.
The Benefits of Cycle Time
Staying ahead of the competition – You can outpace your competition by keeping a close eye on your cycle time. Further, you can make adjustments to stay ahead of the curve.
Higher accuracy in project scoping – By understanding your cycle time, you can give more accurate estimates to your customers.
Identification of needed improvements – By looking at your cycle time, you can potentially spot inefficiencies that can be improved upon.
Standardization – With a standardized cycle time, your production rate is predictable and planned around easily.
How to Calculate Cycle Time
With cycle time, a necessary factor is to exclude all downtime and extraneous activity. These are not part of the actual work time needed to complete a task. Once you exclude these things from production time, you have net production time (NPT). Then, to calculate cycle time, you will divide net production time by the number of units produced.
Cycle time = NPT / number of units produced
What is Throughput?
In manufacturing, throughput is the amount of time that it takes a product to move through certain processes. Throughput time involves several intervals. These are the processing interval, the inspection interval, the move interval, and the queue interval.
Throughput is also often seen as simply the amount of goods that are produced during an amount of time.
The Benefits of Throughput
Downtime reduction – Less downtime creates the opportunity for more throughput. It means a greater quantity of sellable products if the demand is there.
Greater profitability – Better throughput means meeting set quotas and increasing profit
Competitive advantage – Having better throughput than the other options available to a customer puts you at a competitive advantage
Efficiency – Higher throughput means that your machines are working as near capacity as possible, which shows that time is being used more efficiently.
Waste reduction – Having better throughput cuts down on waste reduction through less downtime, less machine idling, and proper utilization of resources.
How to Calculate Throughput Time
Throughput time is calculated by taking the sum of all interval times and dividing it by the number of units produced.
Throughput time = (processing + inspection + move + queue) / number of units produced
Cycle Time vs Throughput Time: What’s the Difference?
While Cycle time and throughput Time are related, there are a couple of key differences. Cycle time is measuring the work time from start to finish while Throughput is measuring the time in each process. Also, throughput Time does include queue time and that sort of factor would be excluded from Cycle time as it is an amount of time that work is not occurring.
You can generally use the two concepts interchangeably, except that they do focus on slightly different aspects of efficiency in production.
Why It Matters
Time is money, pardon the cliche. Understanding how long it takes to complete something is a fundamental concept to grasp in your organization. While these measurements are related, both are vital for improving production and increasing overall efficiency.
Cycle Time vs Throughput Time: Who would use A and/or B?
Both Cycle time and throughput time can be used by the same audience, they are just coming from a slightly different perspective. Throughput time comes from the angle of the various individual intervals in production processes added up, while Cycle time is simply looking at the total time of a cycle as a whole.
Choosing Between Cycle Time and Throughput Time: Real World Scenarios
In a manufacturing plant, you would likely use cycle time until you run into issues with the cycle time not satisfactorily meeting quotas. It may then be necessary to break down the time into the individual intervals that make up Throughput Time to see where improvements could be made.
First, you will look at the time it takes for the raw materials to be made into the product. Next, you will look at the amount of time it takes for the inspection process. Then, you will examine the amount of time it takes to move the product from one facility to another or even from workstation to workstation. Finally, you will look at the amount of time it takes for the product to shift from interval to interval.
Being able to make improvements to the intervals that make up throughput time will generally also improve the cycle time if an improvement is made on any interval other than the queue time.
Other Useful Tools and Concepts
Time is a valuable measurement to keep in mind with any level of manufacturing. As such, you’ll likely want to familiarize yourself with the differences between Takt and Cycle Time. Both of these measurements take a close look at your processes to help eliminate waste and get things on track.
Further, you might want to learn about Kanban. This is a tool used in Lean to visually manage workflows throughout all processes. You can learn how it works and how to implement it in our guide covering the subject.
Summary/Conclusion
Cycle time and throughput time are both essential parts of efficiency in production. You can generally use them interchangeably, as long as you bear in mind that queue time is not figured into cycle time.
