Production Planing and Control 527 TAKT TIME PLANNING FOR CONSTRUCTION OF EXTERIOR CLADDING Adam Frandson 1 , Klas Berghede 2 and Iris D. Tommelein 3 ABSTRACT This paper presents the concept and steps taken, as well as a case study on production scheduling, to implement the use of Takt time. It starts with an overview of traditional construction scheduling and contrasts that with the use of production scheduling using Takt time. It then presents a process for Takt time scheduling and illustrates its application by means of a case study. Takt time was used to drive installation of the exterior cladding system on a healthcare facility in Sacramento, California. Thanks to the use of a production schedule with a four-day Takt, the traditional construction schedule of 11 months for partial completion of the exteriors was reduced to 5.5 months. This case study illustrates the successful development and application of Takt time, challenges, benefits, and lessons learned. KEYWORDS Takt time, production planning, scheduling, exterior cladding. INTRODUCTION WHAT IS TAKT TIME? The German word ‘Takt’ refers to ‘rhythm’ or ‘cadence,’ that is, to the regularity with which something gets done. It is a design parameter used in a production settings (be it manufacturing, construction, or other) (Hopp and Spearman 2008), defined as: Takt time is the unit of time within which a product must be produced (supply rate) in order to match the rate at which that product is needed (demand rate). Setting a rate for production is not a new concept in construction. For many years, practitioners have used the line of balance on projects, including lean projects (e.g., Seppanen and Aalto 2005, Kemmer et al. 2008). Practitioners in the US housing industry have been using demand management and ‘even-flow production’ to balance resources and reduce cycle times (Ballard 2001, Wardell 2003, Bashford et al. 2004, Yu et al. 2009). Bulhoes et al. (2006) demonstrated that controlling the production of a concrete structure using small, repetitive cycles resulted in improvements in productivity, reductions in cycle times, and reductions in waste. Takt time has been used successfully in home building (Wardell 2003), modular home manufacturing (Valarde et al. 2009), and highway construction (Fiallo and Howell 2012). However, 1 Graduate Student, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1712, USA, Phone +1 (661) 644-2978, afrandson@berkeley.edu 2 Production Manager, The Boldt Company, Western Operations, 2150 River Plaza Drive, Suite 255, Sacramento, CA 95833 3 Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Department, and Director of the Project Production Systems Laboratory (p2sl.berkeley.edu), 212 McLaughlin Hall, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1712, USA, Phone +1 (510) 643-8678, tommelein@ce.berkeley.edu