Takt time is the available production time per day divided by the number of items the customer is demanding each day. For example, if the single-shift production process operates eight hours a day (480 minutes) and customers demand 240 widgets a day, the takt time is two minutes.

This is a critical concept for synchronizing production to customer demand and for giving the production system immediate feedback on whether it is meeting demand.

Source: Jim Womack [[email protected]]